Display server skill spread
Kelrath
Join Date: 2013-06-03 Member: 185459Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Join Date: 2013-06-03 Member: 185459Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
So I've been playing a fair bit since the new skill system and reset went into place, and for the most part I think it is going well. Most of the time I am able to see a real difference in the gameplay experience depending on what level of server I join. However, I have noticed that stacking is still sometimes an issue. The server may say that most of the players have similar skill to me, but in reality its just the average skill that is similar, with all the good players on one side. And currently I have no way of knowing this until I join and spend 15 minutes getting stomped.
Stacking is a difficult issue to address, but I thought one little thing that could be done, now that we have a skill system in place, is to display on the server browser the spread of skills present on a server in addition to the average skill. The lower the spread, the lower the potential for stacking. I could then prioritize joining servers with equal skill and low spread and hopefully avoid the trial-and-error aspect of finding a good server. Thoughts?
Stacking is a difficult issue to address, but I thought one little thing that could be done, now that we have a skill system in place, is to display on the server browser the spread of skills present on a server in addition to the average skill. The lower the spread, the lower the potential for stacking. I could then prioritize joining servers with equal skill and low spread and hopefully avoid the trial-and-error aspect of finding a good server. Thoughts?
Comments
Anyway, I'd just like to point out. That NS2 is primarily a FPS, but it is also a RTS. As in all RTS there is a 'snowball' effect in NS2. Economy increases over time, if you get a poor start you will get more and more behind in economy - and therefore it can some times appear as a 'stomp' while it infact is not. You can see it in comp play as well, the game is often decided in the early engagements and it will look like the losing team is just getting destroyed later in the game.
Stomp and snowball effects are often difficult to differentiate. Snowball effects is just the nature of NS2 and most other RTS. It does not matter how well balanced the teams are - so best get used to landslides.
So stombing won't increase your skill and getting stombed won't decrease your skill.
There was a debate internally about showing the players skill at the scoreboard but it was decided against doing so to avoid bashing of lower skilled players and rookies.
If ppl truely want to have even teams they are free to use a "force even teams"-vote.
Overall the idea is that in the future most ppl will join even skilled servers so that the skill of the best and worst player at a server doesn't differ to much.
This could be easily achieved as soon as most ppl would use the quick join function after the next patch.
Oh I am certainly used to how games can snowball. By stomp I more mean that there are several players on the other team who never die and make it impossible for us to even hold the near RTs. You know, the classic stacking that would happen back when there was no skill system at all. Thankfully, the new system has reduced this quite a bit, but it does still happen. For example, lets say that 5 of 12 players on the server have a skill of 200 (arbitrary values here), 3 have a skill of 310, and 3 have 90. The average skill of this server is 200, and if I have a skill of 200 then I'm going to see it as a good server to join. However, if all 3 high skilled people are on one team and all 3 low skilled people on the other then the matches are not going to play out evenly at all. What I'm suggesting is that in the server browser I be able to see that this server has a large skill spread of 220, and therefore stacking is a possibility. If I could also see that there was another server with an average skill of 200 but a spread of only 50, then I might decide to join that one instead because stacking would be much less likely to occur.
I'm not worried about how stomping is going to affect my skill score. I understand that the system takes that into account and it is one of the reasons why I think it is a good system. However, skill score aside, being stomped is not fun. Also, I agree that player's individual score should not be visible, for the very reasons you mention. What I am talking about is being able to see the total spread over the whole server, but not on a player by player basis (see above). Really this is just about adding a little extra info about the composition of a server to the browser so I can make a more informed decision when joining. I'm not proposing any changes to the underlying systems themselves.
I agree, and I think that this extra info could help that convergence occur faster.
The quick join has been around since 267. Is there something changing with it in 269?