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Version 1.3.8 Hotfix Release Notes

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Hoja Lateralus:
Let me put it like this, using the Western (for us - regular) logic born from Aristotle in Ancient Greece.

Thesis: Experience is important part of player capabilities during match

What do I mean:

Experience - the knowledge based on matches played and various situations that occured during plays, the knowledge of different loadouts and the practical knowledge (from "you can hit middle engine on pyra from below" to "you can hit middle engine on galleon from below") or skills that are motory/practice based (for example shooting, especially with weapons that are hard to shoot like h.flak, hwacha with heavy on mid/long distance etc.). Also situational knowledge like "I have 4 stacks on hull which has 30% of life - should I put it out or mallet it?".

Experience =/= skill per se

The indicator of experience is player level. After 1.3.8 it should be more accurate than ever before.

The Thesis must be true (1) or not-true (0).

If Thesis is True and experience is important:
-Hiding player level makes the system pointless
-Limitations to viewing player levels are also pointless
-Player level may be partially valid indicator of players' skill (therefore it should be visible and maybe considered by matchmaker)

If Thesis is False and experience is not important (or its' importance is so small that it doesn't make much difference):
-The whole institution of 'player level' is pointless and should be deleted or be only visible for the player him/herself and no one another
-If level doesn't matter there's no difference between showing it or no apart from subjective judgement of an observator
-Therefore the system should be simple. The current change is complifying the system without anything to offer.

Now let me give you a few reasons why I think the Thesis is true:
-Most low-lvl and mid-lvl engineers use fire extinguisher instead of chemical spray. Using chemical spray has of course higher skill requirements but also experience requirements.
-As I wrote before - knowledge of tactics, combos, loadouts, maps, chem routes, weapon recoils, ships makes more experienced players superior to less experienced in ANY matter.
-Knowledge of "game creed" - knowing importance of communications and finding your place on a ship also makes more experienced players perform better. Many times I heard that cooperation in this game is OP.
-Performing challenging tasks - more experienced players to gain their level had to do something special (achievements). I believe that a guy who managed to win 7 Anglean Riders without dying is more reliable (at least) than the one who didn't (yet?).

From my experienced in 1.3.7 the level of player was pretty much valid indicator of his/her skills.
I strongly believe that the leveling system from 1.3.8 should work just the same as the one from 1.3.7. No "there you can see it, there you can't" or other siliness.
I may not be right but this is my case, and I will probably not change my mind about this.



Another thing: Schwalbe is actually a friend of mine and before he got GOIO I used to tell him about community and problems.

Geo made a very good point - when I see the levels I can enter the lobby and decide whether I want to stay here or not. You may say that matchmaking works and I shouldn't be bothered by levels - well from my experience with matchmaking it doesn't work (as intented). Most of the lobbies I end up to ends up with scores like 5:0, 5:1 etc. Also as someone said in other thread - games may be more or less balanced but every player (even Schwalbe) knows what a pain in the ass it is to fly with someone with lvl 1 or sth like that. People may win games like that and be really frustrated about the game. And I truly DON'T believe that ANY lvl1 may be as good as lvl20-ish. I'm not buying that. As Schwalbe said, I too rarely meet people who are actually happy about matchmaking.

About the custom game list - I actually have like 50-ish friends on my friend list. I only add people who I managed to play a few games with on the same crew and I'm happy to be and play with them. Saying "Yeah, you can have your old server list, just add 200 people to friends" is no solution at all and barely an argument. It's like saying "Well you can dig out a tunnel with a teaspoon, you just need 30 years to do it". Also - if custom game list works just the same as server list (but in a LIMITED way) then why not add just a server list as an optional lobby creation/searching choice than matchmaking?

I think the hiding levels thing is another example of Muse catering to greenhorns rather than veterans. Because it protects greenhorns from their low status (for a short amount of time) but also "protects" them from any advices more experienced players may give. It protects noobs from veterans, but veterans can't protect themselves from noobs APART from password games. And many experienced players say that pub matches are terrible and if you want a good game you have to go as far away as you can from pubs. And it's true. Muse doesn't protect its' veterans and veterans will be lost one after another.

Velvet:
I think the argument against hiding levels is a valid one and it is a discussion that should happen. But this torrent of hostility is damaging the cause against these patch changes. Keep things civil and maybe some good can come out of it.

Keyvias:
Hey Guys,

So let me talk on hiding the levels and let me be frank.

They're wrong and they make players wrong.

The number one weakness of our matchmaking system, the thing that hurts balance the most, is players leaving. Levels also match matches appear unfair that aren't. Being 45 doesn't make you good at the game, being 37, 22, or 11 doesn't make you good at the game, but since they were the only information people had so they used them.  When a player leaves a match it forces the matchmaker to scramble and grab whatever player it can to fill the slot oftentimes at the expense of balance.
I am sure many of you know that rating and level do not correlate and many mid range players are much higher rated than their high level counter parts, but many players don't know this. They take that number and look at it as gospel for the balance of the match, which it very much is not.

Yes we will be making leaderboards with the correct information and they are on their way. In the meantime though, we don't want bad information to spoil matches.
We talked about removing it all together except for some key points:
-Players like showing off level
-It is still good to see if you have a low level on your ship


As for greenhorn vs vet:
Greenhorns don't leave matches. Stats-wise it's the higher level player that will ditch the match more often than not. Their level isn't hidden from their crew though so even if they're a level the captain is not comfortable with he will know and can plan accordingly.


As a general perspective:
1.3.7 and before we got emails weekly on imbalanced matches, second pilots joining mid game, games taking 20 minutes to start, and tens of other issues that we tried to tackle here.
There are three pillars to any match system flexibility, speed, and balance.
Match list is max flexibility with 0 balance and 0 speed.
We tried to make a matchmaker and keeping many of the legacy elements from the match list like friend join, no penalty leaving, rematch, and custom games tried to give the quickest, most balanced, experience while retaining as much flexibility as possible.
We did this so vets would get faster better games, we did this so newbies would get faster better games.

GeoRmr:
Well, you have that nice little disclaimer at the bottom of every lobby.
So can we display the levels again please?

People that use levels to judge other players are still using them as bias - the only difference now is they have to click on everyones name. Or - just wait for them to type? What's the logic behind adding the level to the name in text chat?

So far as a vet I've not experienced any "better" games due to matchmaking, nor any that started particularly faster. I did experience an (enjoyable) 28 minute long queue waiting for the matchmaker to sort me today. Its so much better sitting in silence alone than when I was able to talk to other players waiting for a lobby to start...

GeoRmr:
Sorry, just another question:

Why did you bother putting in so much time and effort redesigning the progression system only to disown it as "wrong" and consider removing it completely?

I'm still of the firm opinion that a glicko2 rating is irrelevant when it comes to this team based game and that the systems mechanical definition of a "better" player based on win/loss is probably as far from an accurate representation of skill as the progression system.

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