Admin > Dev App Testing
Goals and Ramifications of Matchmaking
Byron Cavendish:
Okay, I had a sit and I thought about a lot of this. I'm really willing to ignore my trepidations, and see the good in this, largely due to Howard's convictions. However, going back, this quote really bothered me.
--- Quote from: awkm on February 21, 2014, 09:31:58 pm ---RE: pre-match lobby
Don't fret. You will be able to see your enemy's loadouts. However, it will be organized and ordered. We're looking into real life sports like basketball's tip offs and American football's coin tosses for inspiration. Teams will get opportunities to examine the opposing team's loadout and respond to it accordingly. Depending on the coin toss, one team will get the final customization before the match will start. It'll be much more like chess and even increase the amount of strategic play in pre-match lobbies instead of the mad dash to be the last one to get the surprise customization. Again, we will test this thoroughly when we have something to work with. This is also very rough design wise so we're open to suggestions on it. We'll think about changing class during this time too.
--- End quote ---
This seems really unnecessary, and quite possibly frustrating. If there is an issue of countering builds (which I don't think there is, at any skill level) simply turn off the ability to look at opposing team's ships and loadouts. But why this? What purpose or issue does it solve without creating more issues? "Surprise customization"? When has this ever been an issue? Certainly not at the competitive level, and I've never heard of medium to low level players exploiting that at all.
At the casual level, In the time waiting to start a game, my build and crew loadouts can change quite a few times. At the casual level, if I am playing with people I have never met, and that are coming and going from matches, I'd have to wait right before the game begins to give them loadouts. I also have to find out what they already know and are comfortable with. This seems very punishing for no particular reason.
It's these kind of ideas that frustrate me, because there are so many areas and opportunities for expansion in the game, and time and resources are wasted on stuff like this. I mean, who comes up with this? The battle goes on in game, I really don't want to have to play a game of chess with builds in the lobby. I don't care what the opposition brings, but don't limit choices.
Oh and for the LOVE OF GOD, use the "save as" feature that have been on computers since the dawn of time to save a client version before rolling this out in case it flops. The biggest facepalm moment was right after the spawn system rollout, when everyone wanted the old system back and Eric said nope we cant, we didn't save it or we can't roll it back, something like that.
Dev Bubbles:
@tropo, we're NOT ready for you to start testing yet!! And we do have contingencies for low pop, so you won't be stuck playing with no one. The contingencies you won't see in dev app testing yet, but we're accounting for that.
See! I told you we don't do things in haste, hahaha. Not even ready for you to start testing yet. There are I think about 1200 requests asking for dev app keys, so we have to get everyone coordinated first, which should be today and tomorrow. Then we need to set up the test session times.
You're welcome to poke around, but we will not be as ready today as we will be back 1/2 of this week.
So do not worry just yet. If you need someone to hold you tight. I will personally fly to Australia darn it!
(Ok, there might be a chance for me to not keep that promise, but I would love to visit Australia though.)
awkm:
More up to date information here....
Disclaimer:
If I say something should be happening and clearly is not, please let me know. This is because these features should work before we officially test. Matchmaking is not in a fully testable state right now and we're not ready to test all the use cases.
Futhermore, there are some use cases that we are explicitly not testing for in this current phase of matchmaking.
Keyvias will be posting an announcement soon regarding when testing will officially start.
RE: 3 engineer while queuring solo
For now, you can change all this after matchmaking puts you in a pre-match lobby. Whether or not we want to be strict and lock this in is TBD. We'll test and see how well this goes. We just don't want users to end up in a situation with 4 gunners. This will likely only be locked for Novice, so no worries there so far.
RE: Engineer Captain
Same as above. You can change in pre-match lobby.
RE: How easy crew loadouts
You can chat and voice chat. For now, we will be implementing a global countdown of 90 seconds. You can ready up before then and start faster. Each team will get one 30 second Add Time button for a total of 60 seconds added if both teams as for it, so 2 minutes max in pre-match lobby to change your class, ship, and loadouts.
RE: Match starts before ready
Not much we can do there but we'll be measuring how long it takes for matches to start and tuning the default starting value from the current 90s.
RE: Skill level/rating
Your account will have one rating regardless of classes. It is purely based on your wins/losses. If there is a huge problem with this, we can look to split it up. However, our assumption is that if you're high enough level at any class then you'll probably be playing better in your bad clas than a Novice or average player.
RE: Ratings based on personal skill or team average?
Ultimately, we'd like points awarded to be scaled appropriately to your personal rating. For now, we're taking a simplified approach to get things started.
RE: Dropping mid-match
For now, we won't penalize your rating if you drop mid-match. However, we will allow you to Resume the match you dropped out of. If you fail to resume then you your priority in queue will drop as a punishment for a short duration of time like for your next queue in matchmaking.
RE: Join on players
Yes, for now you can join on your friends in both matchmaking and custom games. We'll be evaluating the efficacy of it as we go along. This includes in pre-match lobby and mid-match. Again, we'll have to look at this carefully. The ratings systems will distribute points accordingly to new members in the match.
RE: Low population
We are not testing for low population right now. If there isn't enough players for a full match, matchmaking will currently fail. We will be thinking of low population contingencies but are strictly not testing it for now.
RE: Ratings measurement and creation
Please read more about ELO/Glicko rating systems. These systems are used in many sports and eSports worldwide. Your ratings is an accmulation of all your historic matches, not just the last 4-5 matches (it will just take 4-5 matches to generate an accurate and 'reliable' rating). There are other variables to measure the reliability and variance of your rating as well. We take all that into account when pairing you up with other players.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system
We are using Glicko 2. You can even download the formulas that we will be basing ours off of from the Glicko 2 website to get a better understanding of how this works if you are curiously inclined.
RE: Save-as
There are a lot of things related to that issue that can make things difficult to roll back from things getting commited without adequete testing and people responsible for systems leaving the company. Some of these things are beyond our control but I take full responsibility. It often comes down to labor priorities and we chose to handle the situation with more design damage control than to completely roll it back. This is why we're testing out matchmaking piece by piece, step by step, to ensure that these kinds of things don't happen. Knee-jerk reactions to spawn changes were expected and dealt with to the best of efforts. However, knee-jerk reactions to an idea stated clearly as an idea discourages our efforts for transparency, which is something many people have asked for.
When posting your comments. Please consider your tone and note that we are always open to ideas. In return, we ask that you're also open to ideas that we present to you.
Matchmaking is taking place in phases. Not all features and functions are in place. Things will slowly be tested over the course of the next few months.
Byron Cavendish:
I completely understand the logic behind phased testing of a concept from a design standpoint. However, it is hard for us the consumer, to fully commit a I like or dislike feeling to the concept because of that. If matchmaking were a cake, and you told me "Okay, I'm making you a cake", I'd ask "okay, what kind of cake"? And you tell me "I can't tell you yet, but first it will have a sponge-y, bread like inner bit". Okay, I like that, but I still don't know what else will be on it, so how can I say I will like it? What if you put lemon frosting on it? I hate lemon frosting. Until I can fully see and taste the cake, I can't just get behind the bread.
awkm:
We're aiming to give you just the cake first. Then maybe a bit of cake with some frosting. Maybe some of the frosting on its own. Then we'll make adjustments to the cake. Then the frosting. And repeat until your arteries explode.
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