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Team Stacking - Match Balance
Dev Bubbles:
With the Bounty system, we're doing a couple of things to plug up some exploits we found that I agree are contribute to one-side teams a bit. I'll let Keyvias chime in more as I don't want to steal his thunder hahahaha.
Kriegson:
--- Quote from: genozide on October 26, 2013, 09:14:28 am ---So we change tutorial and quick join button places but leave the names. problem solved. :D
--- End quote ---
Haha, if only.
And thanks for that update howard! I'm curious to see what you guys have in mind.
Byron Cavendish:
--- Quote from: Kriegson on October 26, 2013, 08:24:44 am ---
--- Quote from: Byron Cavendish on October 26, 2013, 08:06:54 am ----snip-
--- End quote ---
Simply put (And not speaking for myself. I see a lobby with 2 filled ships on one side, empty on my side, I turn around and leave)many people do not want to go browsing through to find a match with no pre-mades, checking teams to ensure they are the same skill level as they are and communicate with their crew to establish roles, sections, gear and a battle plan, and then coordinate that with the other ship.
No, the majority of first time players or people just hoppin on for a few probably want to hit quick match and hope for the best.
That said though, the playerbase isn't large enough for an algorithm that splits up the playerbase into chunks for matchmaking and is invariably far more complex in regards to cooperation than virtually any other game I can think of off the top of my head.
--- End quote ---
That sounds inherently lazy and I feel little sympathy for this mind set. How I read this is "We want as good a chance to win as the pre-mades, but we don't want to put the effort into it that they do. We understand they win because they communicate and organize themselves, but that's far too much work. I just wanna hop in a lobby take whatever tools I want, not say a word to my team and win like the pre-mades." So basically you want to punish our hard work and success granted from that hard work, because certain people are too lazy to put in the effort. Oh and again the simple answer of find another lobby isn't good enough, because it's just far too much work to go to multiple lobbies. Please...I've gone browsing through lobbies when my clan isn't on and it is not hard to find a non pre-made lobby. People intentionally come into pre-made lobbies because most of us are bounties.
And here is a little story to end on. When I first started this game my first taste of clans were being stomped by Gents and Ducks. I didn't get upset, I said "hey these guys are dam good, I'd like to be part of something like that". This inspired me to seek out the forums and join a clan, eventually leading to me being a competitive pilot. Some people take challenges as means of bettering themselves. Some whine and have temper tantrums. You choose which category you want to be in.
Thomas:
I think Bubbles addressed all the issues very well, and the solution is a simple and effective one. Basically giving the community more tools to police itself and address issues of stacking as they arise. Whether they choose to do so or not is completely up to them, as it has always been. Not entirely perfect, but for the state of the game I think it's the best choice, especially with Co-Op/Adeventure Mode on the horizon.
And again, I have never been trying to vilify anyone. I know the competitive teams may feel attacked due to claims of team stacking, and some of those people might strike back and say it's the fault of the newer players challenging them. We have to understand that it is a thing that exists and happens, not entirely from the intentions of either party. I'm not aware of any clan that forms a team and starts a lobby with the straight up intention of pub stomping. But as lobbies exist and players form bonds, things will start to tilt in favor of one team over another.
Feel free to stop reading at this point.
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Even with this issue being resolved, I feel it necessary to post some of the information I gathered. Because frankly it took a lot of time. A lot of time. Too much time. D; (Only managed to get fraction of it done).
First we start off with the design of the survey. The objective was to gather data on matches and look into cases of team stacking and leave rates. This was done by taking a sample every five minutes of currently in progress matches. (You can't have a stacked match if it's not started). This did not include the novice matches (as they cannot be stacked) and was limited to 2v2 matches for simplicity.
Now we have to consider what -is- a stacked match? This definition can vary from person to person. Generally speaking it tends to be a team that sticks together and repeatedly wins by a high margin against opponents that change often (pub stomping). Some might say that it's players of a higher rank, while others would argue that only clanned teams count as stacked. To try and stay as objective as possible, we stuck only with 'rank'. This is not an ideal measure of player skill, but it's a good estimation. Then I set the bar to '40%'. If the difference between the teams weighted average ranks is 40% greater than the avg rank of the lower team, it counts as 'stacked'.
Why 40% and not just some flat number? Because of how leveling and ranks work. Each time you achieve a rank, you have to work much harder to reach the next one. And the more you play, the less difference there is in skill level (So a rank 1 and 2 might be very different in skill, but a 5 and 6 would be pretty close). The average ranks of each team was weighted so that the captain/pilot counted as more of the average. (Put a lvl 13 captain with a lvl 1 crew vs a lvl 1 captain with a lvl 13 crew; assuming they let the lvl 1 actually pilot the ship, the lvl 13 captain is far more likely to win).
Now onto the actual data. Tracking games for 2 hours and 40 minutes, and taking a sample every 5 minutes we come up with this chart:
This is a bar chart showing the weighted ratios of the teams. (HighTeamWeightedAvg/LowTeamWeightedAvg). Anything above 0.4 (40%) is considered stacked. As you can see, this amount fluctuates wildly in both the amount of matches occurring at the same time, and the ratios.
The greatest difference in rank was in this match:
Where you can see that even with the AI dragging down the average (AI's count as rank 0), this team is still much much higher than the opposition. Interestingly, this was not an organized pre-formed team.
Then we have this example of a perfectly balanced team. You'll notice these players cover a wide range of ranks:
And this is my personal favorite, the % of stacked matches occurring at any time:
You add up the number of 'stacked' matches and divide by the total number. Sometimes this goes down to 0, and sometimes all the matches are stacked.
Now obviously we may not all agree to that definition of a stacked team. 40% may be a bit low. Also remember that this is only an isolated example. We'd have to look at the game over a much longer period to get something that better represents the overall state. That's a lot of time for me to sit around and take screen shots of matches every 5 minutes, and with Muse having plans of their own; I won't bother.
Keyvias:
Hey guys just wanted to pop in and talk on the bounty system.
On bounty I was worried that the targets would be stacked against the bounty's and spend their weeks losing constantly, but it appears the opposite is true. I've seen a lot of time all the criminals bunch up together and spend all day just destroying all comers.
While I do love the idea of these pirate coves I'm going to spend some time thinking of how to organically organize hunting parties, if you you have any thoughts, plots, or plans please email me at keyvias@musegames.com as I don't want to derail any harder than I already am.
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