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Problems with matchmaking

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Wundsalz:

--- Quote from: shaelyn on October 22, 2014, 07:18:35 pm ---hmmmmm.

yesterday I flew in a match that had a level 45 pilot and a level 1 pilot (that had only played a couple matches) together, and a couple of level 20-30 pilots on the other team.

and you know what?  the match was balanced.  it was actually a very long deathmatch - a close game.  the matchmaker seemed to do its job.

...but I'm not sure the situation served the novice very well, and I was on the ship with the level 45 captain - I know he was frustrated.  and while I'm not one to get frustrated easily at someone else learning something new, I understand when other people do.  some people just want to sit down and play - and in a teamwork-based game, they don't want to carry the whole match with half the team falling behind.  it did happen some with the old system too...but not like this.  this isn't the only time that someone's vented their frustration to me with very similar circumstances within the last couple of days, not by a long shot.

--- End quote ---

This is problem matchmaking CAN resolve, but the current implementation doesn't. The current Match making implementation is too eager to drop players (and veterans in particular) into matches ASAP. I suggest to let vets wait for a couple of minutes to mix them into existing vet-matches rather than trying to balance horribly stacked lobbies with them.
I'd like to share a post I've made in the dev-app section a while back, as it's still valid for the live version we all play right now. In the current state of matchmaking I think muse addressed point 2 insufficiently. Currently we experience the scenario described in b). I don't like that.

--- Quote from: Wundsalz on July 09, 2014, 01:04:32 pm ---In oder to create "good matches" the system needs to minimzie two things:
1.) The difference between the average player rating of the matched teams (this is to ensure the outcome of the match is as open as possible)
2.) The deviation of the player rating in the match from the average player rating (this is to ensure that noone has to carry "deadweight" aroung)
In order to do both jobs properly the system needs to rely on a sufficiently large enough pool of 'matching' players is 'available' at any time someone hits the ready button. I do believe our player base is large enough to match-make the vast majority of players fufilling both requirements rather well, which will likely increase the average match quality significantly.
However I doubt the system can cater the needs of veteran players properly. That's because the playerbase of veterans is rather low - especially outside of EU/US-prime-time. In order to deal with us via matchmaking you've got two options:
a) let us wait until a sufficiently large number of "fitting players" is available (which would probably mean that you'll have us wait until that one running vet-match is over while we watch a queue-timer) or
b) match us against average players with less useful partners. This is how other games often do it and it tends to yield "balanced" matches in which the "moster" tries to accumulate kills faster than the "feeder" dies to the enemy. That's rarely enjoyable, despite the fact that the outcome of the match is hard to predict.

--- End quote ---

sparklerfish:
100% agree with Wundsalz.  While it might be more "fair" to quickly throw some higher-skill players into a low-skill team against an average-skill team, it's not fun at all.  I'm not a CA or teacher because I can be abrasive and low on patience, and I don't like to spend half a match yelling "SPANNER TO REBUILD!  MALLET TO REPAIR!  THINGS HAVE A COOLDOWN!  REPAIR OTHER STUFF!  AIM AT THE HULL!!!" to someone who has played 2 matches.  I would much rather wait longer to matched up with an entire lobby of players with a lower deviation of level/skill/however it's measured.

Omniraptor:
Bragging rights? I kind of want every achievement to also be a badge..

Mezhu:
Once a game's ended, people should be returned to queue if they wish to continue playing, either solo or with the friends they initially queued with. This way lobby quality will improve over time, as people will either end up in the same lobby (assuming there's no better one) or in one they're better fit for. If there's a lvl45 pilot in queue and 3 lvl 5 pilots, they shouldn't be placed in the same lobby at all. At the very least, ask the minority to switch to another class that has somewhat of a lesser impact in the outcome of the game and the enjoyment factor for the rest of the players (and himself).

Also scramble makes no sense anymore. Game 1, you're lvl 40 with a lvl 1 ally vs lvl 38 and lvl 5 ally. Game 2, lvl 40 is with the lvl 38 versus the lvl 1 and 5. (???)

Instead of scrambling ships and further reducing a lobby's quality just send everyone back to queue. If they are so eager to rematch or whatever there's always custom games.

ps; Wunds is ofc right. I'm horrified of queuing alone (even more than I was of playing alone in the past), as the game tends to throw me into a lvl 5 ship versus a full 2 ship stack in a dumb attempt to balance things. If game's superempty at a moment and there's no people playing, keep it as is. Otherwise, matchmaking should take a look at currently running lobbies and the players within them, and have freshly queued people wait accordingly. Once these running games are over, and the participants are thrown back into the queue, there will be far better potential balancing of the next few games, resulting in more happy players.

Keyvias:
Hey Guys,

Just got out of a hour long call about this subject so I want to share some behind the curtain info, thoughts, and reasoning. It's also very important to note that balance isn't something obvious (in most circumstances) especially since levels and Glicko2 score are very very different.  There are many level 20s that share the same glicko2 score with 40s and vice versa. Even beyond this I do agree that matchmaking does not prioritize balance as the main focus.

Any match system is built of three pillars
Time
Flexibility
Balance

Time is obvious, the amount of time you force a player to wait to find a match. Flexibility is things like friend join and crew form, basically anything that lets players have control in any form. Balance is well.. balance.

@Mezhu you're definitely right that the rematch button does sacrifice the number of people in queue and contributes to less balanced matches, but so do many elements of the system.
Matchmaking has gone through a lot of changes through it's development through it's time and based off player outcry there were a lot of concessions that improved the flexibility of the system, but decreased the time or more often the balance.

Features that hurt balance
Rematch
Crew Form
Friend Join
Ship/slot swapping
Spectator swapping
Lobby leaving without penalty
Custom matches
Server Location
Speed of matchmaker

If there are any things here that you don't think are vital definitely let me know.

The more of these we can remove the better we can balance the game.  If none of these existed we could promise quick and perfectly balanced matches all the time with very few edge cases, but we'd sacrifice all flexibility. We love the idea of playing with friends, but statistically matches started with crew form are less balanced than matches started solely from single queue players. In this case though we view being able to play with friends and have that flexibility, as greater than balance.

We will of course be fine-tuning and tweaking the system to maximize every area we can and we if we ever have a clever or improved idea we'll put it in, but in the meantime I thought you guys would like to know how we tackled this problem and the decisions we made.

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