Guns Of Icarus Online
Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Thomas on October 19, 2013, 10:57:26 pm
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Problem:
An issue that's been around a long time, and one I'm not particularly fond of. Essentially what happens is that groups of players 'stack' one team and devour the other team. It might be a clan or group of friends that communicate well, or just players with more experience. The problem is that the opposing team is generally less experienced players, and the absolute curb stomping they receive cause them to have a poor experience with the game. This can lead to raging, complaining, calling hacks, or simply quitting.
And while I dislike how often it happens, I dislike even more how often it happens at the same time. I can hop from game lobby to game lobby, and run into three or four different clans all stacked on the same team facing off against random groups of players significantly less experienced (and leveled) than they are. They might be practicing for upcoming tournaments, trying to rapidly increase their bounty/hunter points, or just hanging out; but I feel that they would have a more interesting time having a match against one of the other clans/groups that are more around their skill level and experience, and let the random players get some confidence and practice by playing against each other.
In an effort to remedy this, I'd suggest (like others before me) a system to more 'fair' matches and lobbies.
Considerations:
There are a few things to keep in mind when trying to solve the problem:
- Guns of Icarus Online does not currently have a system to 'rank' players by skill. (The current level system is not skill based)
- You still want friends and clans to be able to play together.
- Should it be optional or mandatory?
- If optional, how do you encourage players to play fair matches/discourage them from playing unfair matches?
- Do rank players by their Role performance, or overall performance?
- Take into account that this is a highly complex team oriented game. Player performance is directly related to their teammates performance.
Possible Solutions
The first steps to make even teams is to develop a system for ranking players based on skill. The current level system gives a general indication for experience, but it can easily be ignored or avoided to give a false impression of low experience/skill.
GoIO already keeps lots of player data and statistics, which is a great place to begin. As per the considerations, you first have to choose whether to do an overall skill rating, or one based purely on the chosen role. You might be a great pilot, but a terrible gunner for instance. Although if you tend to engineer a lot, you might have a very high engineer rank, but a very low gunner rank, while your skill at gunning might still be very high.
I would suggest using weighted statistics to give a ranking for each role. So your overall accuracy will affect both your engineer and gunner ranking, but has a much greater affect on your gunner rank. Where your ability to repair affects all your roles, but engineering the most, and piloting the least.
Then you have to take into account the team. A bad pilot can really reduce a gunner's accuracy by swinging the ship about randomly, where a bad engineer can keep your ship from staying alive, despite your great piloting skills. And a really good pilot and gunner can prevent the enemy from doing significant damage to your ship, giving you a lower rebuild/repair score.
This part is the hardest to consider, and my best suggestion would be to just use the win/loss ratio as you playing that role as a large part of your rank overall. So even if you get a low score from someone else's performance (good or bad), in the long run, your performance should level out to where it belongs. Which also brings up the point that your rank shouldn't be from the beginning of your GoIO career to the end of it, but perhaps just an average of the previous 50 matches or so for each role. Even if you do awful in the beginning, you'd still be able to get near the highest ranks by improving. (Or you can just use a +/- system to increase or decrease their score based on win/loss/performance).
Once you've hammered out a way to rank players, you need to start tossing individual players together to form teams. At this point you have to consider the desire of players to play with their friends. For this, it's pretty easy to use the 'Form Crew' and let them get into a ship (or possibly 2 ships). I wouldn't recommend letting them fill three ships, as that would make it much harder to find a match against equally skilled players.
For random players, you can have them pick their first and second role choices and then be put into a queue. Once enough players are found (8-12) they can be tossed into the 'Form Crew' lobby in their respective roles on the ships. At which point they can discuss the ships they're going to use, and the loadouts they're going to bring. I would recommend to not let them swap roles or ships, as that might change their rank/scores; and more importantly invites people to be stubborn about their role (ie: People saying they won't fix the ship as the engineer unless someone lets them be captain). At this point, they should also be allowed to vote for a map. Once they hit ready, they'll be tossed into a final queue that will pair them with an opponent, and whichever map has the most votes (total the votes from both sides) will be the one that's played. Or just do a random map.
Now that each player has a rank, and they can play with their friends, and are put into ships/teams, you have to look into how to compare ranks. Do you do it player to player? As in if you have someone with a score of 200, do you find another player with a score around 200 and put them on opposite teams? Or do you take an average or weighted average of the players on the ship, then match it by a ship to ship basis? How would you go about weighting the scores? For instance, I find that pilots have possibly the largest impact on a ship's performance. So you might give their score a higher weight than the gunners or engineers.
I'd recommend doing it on a ship average, as finding a compatible player for every player might be difficult.
Then it's a matter of playing the match, recording the stats afterwards, recalculating the ranks. Then you have to consider what to do with the players after. The people who entered as a team might want to remain a team, so they should likely be tossed back to the 'Form Crew', where the random players who were put together may or may not want to be on the same team again. I'd recommend tossing them back to the main lobby or right back into the queue if they so choose. They can always friend their previous team mates and try to form a crew after. And this helps keep the teams balanced and fresh.
Other Thoughts:
Ultimately this should be optional, allowing players to still form their own matches and go wherever they please. But to encourage for more fair teams more often, I'd recommend that the Bounty system and achievements only work in the Ranked play. This allows players to still group up for practicing, but discourages them from stacking unfair teams for 'farming' points and achievements.
Finally, the whole idea of Ranked/Fair Matches may be beyond the scope of GoIO (skirmish). These types of ranking/scores are often used in other types of games that have a much larger player base, and aren't as heavily team oriented. I am uncertain whether Muse has the resources to attempt this, or if the game is capable of using it successfully. During a sale period or event, the number of players increases to the point where it could be used, but during the lower population times, it might take far too long to get even matches. And players may end up facing the same people over and over again due to the match length and them leaving and entering the queue around the same time repeatedly.
If it were to be put into place, there may have to be other considerations, such as allowing for unfair teams during a low period. One such system might be to spend a minute looking for teams with a score within a certain range of each other, then after that minute the range increases. Thirty seconds later it increases again, after two minutes it might take anyone. At which point, the aftermatch calculations would have to be weighted. The difference between the loss and addition of points would be affected by the difference in rank. A team with a score of 1500 might not see an increase in points at all if they beat a team with a score of 300, and the team of 300 might not see a reduction. While if the team with the score of 300 won, they might have a huge increase in rank/points, where the 1500 would suffer a huge loss.
Then you might have to also have the queue system weighted to discourage setting the same teams against each other repeatedly, and even so that one person doesn't get to be the captain/pilot over and over and over again.
TLDR:
A not entirely friendly issue that is quite complicated to solve, and may never see an acceptable resolution.
Thoughts?
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Intermediate and Expert lobby options in the same way there are novice lobbies I think would help this greatly, in example say intermediate lobbies can only be joined after having a class reach level 5, and expert would only be accessible after level 10.
Beyond that I don't know, since people obviously rather play on teams that contain their friends and clan members I think this will always be a problem.
Maybe once the new scrimmage season starts with all of it's changes and additions more clans will put emphasis on arranging more frequent scrimmages.
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The only issue with that is that player rank =/= player skill. It's just based on achievements. The novice system was put in after many of the oldies had passed that bar. And many of the novice players aren't aware that they'll be kicked out of the novice matches once they pass level three.
Once you reach a certain point, you can easily ignore the achievement system, and maintain a fairly low level while still having lots and lots of experience.
With tiers of matches (5-10, 10+) many players will try to stay below that bar, since the higher tier you go, the more difficult the matches will be. (Also another reason you see more stacked teams, it's easier to pub stomp than it is to take on another organized team).
Although it would help temporarily, as the novice players move into the next level and face similarly experienced opponents, and the already well experienced players have already passed that point.
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Hi, Imma rant for a bit...
I do agree that stacked teams can definitely lead to unilateral games, which makes the whole scenario kinda lame for both teams. No one likes getting thumped over and over, but then again beating new players with no real competition isn't really that enjoyable either.
I know this all first hand because I often do fly with my clan. Especially with this most recent WANTED season, half of my clan has a price on their heads, so we're definitely going to stack our team to defend their bounty. That's an entirely different situation, a flaw in my mind with the Bounty system.
The problem in my mind is with the whole segregation in general of players based on skill. Yeah, new players will sometimes get stomped by lvl 10+ teams who have been flying together for months. That's why there's the 1-3 beginner's matches. However, I go into those matches all the time as a trainer, I'm allowed to go in there to be a resource to them to learn. The problem I see all the time at that level is before I arrive, it's often the blind leading the blind. Players who've flown a few dozen times all of a sudden believe they're masters, and start teaching others sometimes entirely false or bad advice. I didn't get to become as good of a pilot as I am now by going against just any other players, I got to where I am now by flying against better players! In that exchange, yes I normally lost, but I took something away from that loss that made me better.
By segregating based on skill level, you're potentially depriving up-and-coming players the chance to learn from better players and become better themselves. With any conditioning or training, there's a certain plateau effect unless you're pushed beyond your comfort zone. Whenever my clan plays with new players, we'll often break up our ships so we have one good crew on each side, or better yet we invite promising players onto our ships and try to train them up. We get loads of praise from lower level players for the tips we give them, because otherwise they wouldn't have known certain tricks.
Yes, you do get the occasional complaint about stacked teams, and people suggesting that we go easy or dumb down our builds. My response to this is absolutely not. I will never "dumb down" my play or not go at my opponent with everything I got. I'll give them build and loadout suggestions before a match, and then critique their play after the match, but I'm always going to show them what good competition is in hopes that they can learn from it and strive to be better. For every complaint we get, there's normally two praises telling us to keep it up, because even new or inexperienced players want us to throw everything we got at them and not baby them.
With the amount of teamwork in this game, I fell like segregating by skill would do more harm than good to this community. Players learn from other players, they learn from their successes but even more-so their failures. We already have a 1-3 beginner's matches, but that alone has flaws, and regardless you still see brand new players skipping them and trying to enter a competitive match. We need to perfect the system we have already rather than try to segregate it out further.
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The only issue with that is that player rank =/= player skill. It's just based on achievements. The novice system was put in after many of the oldies had passed that bar. And many of the novice players aren't aware that they'll be kicked out of the novice matches once they pass level three.
Once you reach a certain point, you can easily ignore the achievement system, and maintain a fairly low level while still having lots and lots of experience.
With tiers of matches (5-10, 10+) many players will try to stay below that bar, since the higher tier you go, the more difficult the matches will be. (Also another reason you see more stacked teams, it's easier to pub stomp than it is to take on another organized team).
Although it would help temporarily, as the novice players move into the next level and face similarly experienced opponents, and the already well experienced players have already passed that point.
I think that player rank =/= player skill doesn't factor in as much as you'd think it does since instead of skill I'm worried more about playtime, a level 5 regardless of skill is going to have a large amount more experience and understanding of not only ships and guns, but also heeding the captains instructions as to loadouts than say a level 3 coming out of novice matches. Then the level 10 tier of games I highly doubt you'd get a second gunner on your ship bringing all the wrong ammos at the level 10 tier. So you see it isn't about Skill at all, it's about the fact that the matchmaking as it is now is quite unbalanced and new player arrogance is unfortunately a big problem.
Example,
Just yesterday, I was only playing with just one ships worth of Knights in pubs and was continuously 5 - 0'n lobbies because no matter how I tried to tell the other team that they shouldn't ready up without loading out their ships they thought they were they be all end all in videogame knowledge and didn't listen, flying goldfish and squid with two gunners, wrong gun combos, with their pilot as a part of the crew, and their captain an engi or gunner. Our team wasn't even so much stacked, it was a simple matter of the other ship on my team was more experienced and thus wasn't making these rookie mistakes. I mean we literally ran into a goldfish/squid team that one ship had two gunners, and the other didn't even have a pilot, both ships were all level 1s and 2s and they refused to listen to me no matter how I tried to tell them how much of a mistake that was.
Novice matches are well and good in concept but they mostly only server to agitate, and players in the 1-3 area avoid them because of the restrictions. Instead, since the tooltips on ships and guns are quite descriptive as to what does what, remove the restrictions from novice matches (or keep them and also have the ranked lobbies for 1-3 without restrictions) and instead have ranked matches in tiers, where lower ranks simply cannot play at higher tiers. Also as a preemptive anti troll measure, higher rank players can't play at the 1-3 tier. Also, for those that want the old publobby system there can be "unranked" lobbies where everyone can join.
It would look a bit like this,
Novice, restricted lobbies
non restricted Rookie tier 1-4
Intermediate tier 5-9
Expert tier 10+
I also think that this would give new incentive to actually rank up early on for some players.
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It would look a bit like this,
Novice, restricted lobbies
non restricted Rookie tier 1-4
Intermediate tier 5-9
Expert tier 10+
Would never agree with this unless achievements were playtime based and not achievement based. Currently level means nothing, being forced to do pointless achievements just to play on a higher tier would frustrate a lot of players me included.
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It would look a bit like this,
Novice, restricted lobbies
non restricted Rookie tier 1-4
Intermediate tier 5-9
Expert tier 10+
Would never agree with this unless achievements were playtime based and not achievement based. Currently level means nothing, being forced to do pointless achievements just to play on a higher tier would frustrate a lot of players me included.
This, I'm currently a level 9 pilot, but has flown for 1k + games. Personally I wouldn't class myself as Intermediate so maybe base the tiers around the amount of games played since more games (usually) means better understanding of the game for example:
Novice: <50 games played.
Rookie: 50-100
Intermediate: 100-xxx
Expert: xxx<
Obviously these numbers would have to be tweaked here and there but just as an idea
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It would look a bit like this,
Novice, restricted lobbies
non restricted Rookie tier 1-4
Intermediate tier 5-9
Expert tier 10+
Would never agree with this unless achievements were playtime based and not achievement based. Currently level means nothing, being forced to do pointless achievements just to play on a higher tier would frustrate a lot of players me included.
This, I'm currently a level 9 pilot, but has flown for 1k + games. Personally I wouldn't class myself as Intermediate so maybe base the tiers around the amount of games played since more games (usually) means better understanding of the game for example:
Novice: <50 games played.
Rookie: 50-100
Intermediate: 100-xxx
Expert: xxx<
Obviously these numbers would have to be tweaked here and there but just as an idea
That's an idea, though those numbers seem a little low for me.
Novice: <100 games played.
Rookie: 100-249
Intermediate: 250-499
Expert: 500+
Is where I'd put it at, but a solid idea since like you guys said going by level wouldn't work.
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Match count does sound like a better indication of player experience. One thing I'd keep in mind is population though. The more we divide up the players, the harder it becomes to fill up the lobbies. It is a -lot- more feasible than a rank/score system based on skill/performance. Could always consider doing that along with some kind of queue system, so that instead of setting it to balance ranks/scores, you're balancing ships based on player experience (so you could end up with ships filled with a range of experienced players, as long as the other team has players within a similar range).
This also allows for a better coaching environment, since the higher experienced players can do their best to teach the less experienced; something they may not get in segregated matches (like NoWuffo pointed out).
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Personally I'd still like to see some skill or performance based rank. Just because of the fun of trying to get that number higher, a little more competitive setting. And also that both player level and game experience are only loosely related to skill level. You can have great players that just don't bother with achievements and so end up staying low level, and you can also have players with high levels because they spend all their time just trying to do the achievements (you've met these people, they're the ones that will start a match and burn moonshine for the full 240 seconds before actually trying to play; and then they'll keep going for ram kills.) Play time/match count is a perfect way to determine experience of a player, but lots of experience doesn't make them highly skilled. It's still a good way to estimate or guess their relative skill level.
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Upon further reflection though, ranking/scoring players by skill may also lead to a more volatile community. As nice as it would be to see how you stack up against other players, and give you something to work at beyond achievements (as well as it being a balance method); some people might end up taking it too seriously. Since your personal performance is tied in with your teammates performance. One 'bad apple' (or even just a newer player) can cause some serious problems on the ship and result in a poor performance. Despite your best efforts and abilities, you could get creamed just because your engineer just brought a mallet with both chem spray and fire ext. This can result in some very competitive and angry players lashing out and harassing other players; leading to a pretty dark community. I want to believe that we'd be above that kind of thing, with an active CA base and lots of supportive players of all ranks and skill levels; but competition can bring out the worst in people.
Still might be worth that risk. The desire to play on top and not having to worry as much about getting creamed by a stacked team might keep players around longer, and maybe even bring more in.
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I wouldn't feel comfortable with dividing people or trying to label by skill in some way. I know the intention is good and the issue is there but just saying it'd be best if it was just indicated some way and maybe a vote option for balancing teams, maybe? But would it work practically is the question and couldn't we already try balance out the matches if we're 4 ships and 2 are mixed, help the other by switching teams?
A teamswitch option might be great to help this. On the other hand we might want to practise and train clanwise and then a stomp can be unavoidable. Also someone might invite a friend to get them to know the game and promote it. How will they or trial members join the official more serious skrims if limited? No restrictions, please, but some tool to swap ships in match lobby or more effort in balancing out matches would maybe help a bit. As long as it can't be misused. Maybe captain majority vote from winning team? Sometimes it's a good challenge to learn against the hard teams but it's also down to what way they play and the mutual respect.
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I made a few suggestions in this thread (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2649.0.html) that would greatly help this issue in a more passive manner. Though basing it on level instead of 'real' skill is a stopgap, showing players the levels of crews before they joined any match would discourage many lower level players from joining a stacked game.
If there was any match locking, I would not go with hard levels of 1-4, 4-7 whatever, but make overlapping sets. 1-3, 2-5, 4-7, 5-9 and so on. Otherwise, you can suddenly be thrust into the next bracket without being ready. At level 4, you could join either 2-5 or 4-7.
The easy team switching ship option has been suggested in another thread, and is a good idea.
On to the rant...
NoWuffo, I got the same rant from a Cox captain in a string of about 10-15 matches where every match was 5-0/1. Could have been you, but I didn't really pay attention. The excuses in your rant really illustrate the problem. I would hear advice to the new player that cycled in maybe once every 3-5 matches, counter to your claims both here and in the matches. Most of the time it was simply telling your crews to bring the best possible loadouts for the best possible builds. Most of the players would only stay for one or two games after getting insta-killed over and over. They learned nothing, other than what I told them in the match.
Another excuse was that Cox had just gotten out of a challenge match with another clan, so the 'stacking' I saw when I first came on was incidental. That is totally fine. However, I have to mention here that as Cox members started to leave for the night, any time a higher level player would join the match, someone on your side would insist they join the 'winning' team, leaving the other side with max level players lower than the lowest level players on your team. Any request to level the teams out or to switch one ship to the other side was ignored or derided, with the now-familiar mantra of "We will tell the other team what to bring, and give them advice, but we will not blah blah blah (we just want to have the best everything)."
Then there was the excuse of the Cox team 'practicing'. Practicing? Really? Against 'pugs'? How is any strategy you learn by stomping ships that are not even remotely a challenge transferable to higher level matches? That is like a pro boxer beating the crap out of neighborhood kids and saying it is practice for tonight's match. If you want to 'practice' like that, go to the practice map. In matches, show more good sportsmanship.
Then one of your captains had the gall to try to say it was my fault for not supporting the other ship in a few of the matches. These were new captains that charged straight into your traps, while your ships barely moved to shred them. They had no strategy at all. You offered them no strategy advice of how they could beat you, despite your constant claims. While they were charging in, I was instructing my crew where the guns and components were, when to shoot which guns at what range, and when to or not to fix things with which tools. The other ships had no such benefit. I was also trying to advise the other captain to hold back and stay grouped.
The icing on the cake is when I heard this gem: "I am streaming. I am not going to handicap myself against anyone." I really have to wonder how many people loved watching Cox stomp new crews over and over. From what I gathered, all Cox team members were also communicating outside of the game, giving basically everyone the advantage of 'Captain chat'.
Sir, not only was that intentional team stacking on the part of Cox, it was a disgrace and show of pure, poor sportsmanship. You are wrong on every point you made, and this is exactly why there needs to be better tools to use against the piles of excuses proposed by others like you. At least one first time player told me he was not going to play anymore because not having a chance at all was not fun. I encouraged him to try more novice matches, but first impressions are hard to break. That is lost revenue for Muse, both in the sale of items, and word of mouth game sales.
As for your claim of 1 occasional complaint per 2 praises or whatever from players that want you to throw everything you have at them, this is just ridiculous. It is leaving out the majority of people that just simply get fed up and leave without saying anything. What you have there, son, is a sever case of confirmation bias. If two players have told you they like how you act, and stay around, but 100 leave without saying anything, you have failed. However, you latch onto the two positives with an iron grip and hold them up for all to see with a "Look mom, I done good!" If everyone voiced their opinion, you would get a far different picture.
I'll leave off with this. If this was baseball (or whatever sport your country prefers) game, what I saw was like pitting a pro team against a stream of Little League kids after the main 'pro' game. The pro team brought only its 'A game', trying to claim that the kids were never going to learn if they went easy on them. Inning 1 ends by slaughter rule, 3 outs on the first three kids, and 50 home runs for the pro team. Over and over for 10 games straight.
Stop pretending to do this garbage for other players' good. This is pure pride buried in excuses. Your rant is null.
/counterrant
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Hi LeMoon, how are you?
First off, I don't appreciate you calling myself and my clan out like this in a open, public forum. This is a very pointed attack and is unwarranted. I actually remember you and your complaints, that's who I was basing most of this post about, but I never did nor would I ever bring up your name. Attacking another person or group like you did is kinda low class.
As to your counter-points, I am sorry those matches went so poorly for yourself. I'm not going to argue back and forth with ya on the forums. If you want you can pm me directly and we can hash out our differences privately, I think that'd be more appropriate for the discussion at hand. Thanks.
That's an idea, though those numbers seem a little low for me.
Novice: <100 games played.
Rookie: 100-249
Intermediate: 250-499
Expert: 500+
Is where I'd put it at, but a solid idea since like you guys said going by level wouldn't work.
If there was some sort of segregation, I think matches played would be a good litmus test. You can't play just sheer numbers of matches without picking up a thing or two. I also like the idea of having overlapping levels, to avoid the immediate transitions.
Maybe a good way to do this would be when you set up an arena , you can set a level cap or skill cap of some kind. You could then specifically invite players you still want to play with into it (friends, newbies you're training up, lower level fellow-clan members, ect). That might have some merit there.
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I would never suggest to absolutely force even teams. Players should still be able to set up matches where they can put players where ever. All I'd like is an option that lets players get into more fair matches. Think of it like an official and unofficial match choice. Where the official uses one of the suggested methods to sort of force and highly encourage even matches, and the unofficial uses the old system of people just piling in. But you would have to have a system to encourage players to use the 'official' matches more. Such as achievements, stats, and bounty systems only working there, where the unofficial is more of a fun practice with no repercussions.
I do like Richard's idea of staggering the limits (although I'm still pushing for my overtly complicated system), as this can help prevent the population from being squeezed into little chunks. We do have lots of players, but we don't have massive amounts of them. And the more we 'cut up' the population with limits (such as only rank 1-4, 3-5, 4-7, 6-10, etc), the harder it can become to fill the matches. The staggering can reduce this, but not remove it.
For example if we have 100 people online and we use strict limits (1-3,4-6,7-10) we could end up with a group of (40, 50, 10) respectively. If we stagger it (1-4, 3-5, 4-7, 6-10) we might end with (50, 40, 50, 20), since most people will qualify for at least two different divisions. This is highly exaggerated of course. But it shows the problem we might run into, with some groups getting quite low in numbers at certain times, making it difficult to find a match they qualify for.
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How about, instead of ranking players, we simply get the root of the problem: Stacked teams
If a certain match ends up having the exact same crews on one side winning multiple times in a row with the other side constantly having different captains and crews and still constantly losing, people will have the option of marking the match as stacked. After X amount of people mark the match as stacked, it'll appear as so in the lobby.
If any two matches get marked stacked, then the matches will automatically be merged so as to have two stacked teams fighting against each other. Marked matches should also have higher priority for anyone with 2+ ships in the "Form Crew" option.
If there are an uneven amount of stacks and someone decides that they want to rise up to the challenge, then joining the match will show them a list of other members who want to try fighting them as well. From there, they'll have access to another chat in which they can organize each other into going to "Form Crew" and matching up against the team.
This'll be to prevent those level 1 engineers going in as a captain on a ship that obviously wouldn't work, but, at the same time, allow players who actually know what they're doing to group up and rise to the challenge. Honestly, in my experience, the real challenge to fighting a stacked team is just finding a team that doesn't include a level one engineer as captain.
If the teams are obviously still stacked (Either the first game goes 5/0 or a team wins three times in a row), both teams will be given the option of requeuing for a different match.
This way, we have a simple system that will ensure that people who want to play together will still get to stick together without having to fight against unorganized teams without forcing anyone into tiers.
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"Teams are being scrambled"
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I say here what I've said in the past regarding this matter.
In my clan we get accused of stacking all the time. Usually when it happens, we've made a lobby specifically so that we can fly together. The whole reason we're in a clan is because we're friends who enjoy flying together. We also happen to be relatively skilled and work well together. Sometimes it starts after the first match, other times it doesn't even go as far as a match; a bunch of new players join up and start crying 'stack'. I'm all for mixing it up and keeping things fair, but sometimes I want to fly with my friends.
I honestly don't know what the solution is, if there is one. We've tried naming lobbies 'Wolfpack practice' or 'High levels only' or 'Please no new players', and it still happens. I've suggested making an optional label for matches that indicate that it's a high level match, but that idea has been met with mixed thoughts. I definitely feel forcibly segregating the community isn't the answer, and even when it's attempted, how many beginners do you see not using the beginner matches, when it's apparent that they should?
Frankly, I've seen this issue get tossed around more than most, so it's obviously on the minds of some of us, but outside of balancing ourselves, what can we do really that won't create other issues? It's just something that we'll have to be aware of and decide at the time if we need to fix it. I think we have a good community and players who enjoy a genuinely competitive match. Nobody -wants- to pub stomp, and I feel the instances where that is intentional are limited at best. Stacked teams are just a thing that happens sometimes in team-based games.
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Once issue I see with that is it's pretty simple to work around. Once they get flagged as stacked, they might just leave and reform in another lobby.
A great team of friends/clannies isn't a bad thing. It's just that whomping on new players leaves those new players with a bad taste in their mouth. Dramatically decreasing their enjoyment of the game, and in some cases causing them to give up on the game. We still don't want to punish them for playing with their friends.
In theory there should be no special system required. In a perfect world these teams would seek each other out, or try to shuffle, change ships, or whatever to try and create fair matches. For the most part, this does not happen. Nor do you very often see players with experience banding together to try and challenge those preformed teams. In some instances, when a valid opponent does appear, these stacked teams will just call it a day. You can conclude that these teams aren't overtly interested in seeking out fair matches. Whether it's because they want to win, they want to farm, or probably it's just too much effort for them to find another organized team in a match with enough slots for them all.
So based on some other feedback, we want a system that:
-Creates fair matches
-Lets us play with our friends
-Has no (or minimal) loopholes to stack teams
-Still has a place for organized teams to get together
-Doesn't discriminate based on rank/skill/experience
-Is simple
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So based on some other feedback, we want a system that:
-Creates fair matches
-Lets us play with our friends
-Has no (or minimal) loopholes to stack teams
-Still has a place for organized teams to get together
-Doesn't discriminate based on rank/skill/experience
-Is simple
That's my point, I don't think a system like that can exist. You end up excluding someone, whether it's a clan that just wants to fly together or new players looking for a challenge.
I really feel policing ourselves is the only real solution. I know in our clan, we try to explain to new players what we're doing and that they might want to find another match. They don't always listen and end up being upset by the match anyway. Additionally, we in Wolfpack try to fly against other clans at every opportunity, but sometimes there just isn't another on in enough numbers to fly against.
Sometimes a 'stacked team' is just a group of friends who want to fly together, is my point. I don't feel actual, intentional 'stacking' happens as much as these threads suggest, and I feel that we as a community do a fair job at keeping things as even as we can. That's my 2 cents.
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Can I just say compared to other threads I've seen based around this issue, this time we've actually gotten somewhere?
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I really feel policing ourselves is the only real solution. I know in our clan, we try to explain to new players what we're doing and that they might want to find another match. They don't always listen and end up being upset by the match anyway.
Once you've been at this as long as I have, you just load up a rage quitter loadout, pwn the heck out of them and move onto the next match. It isn't worth the time or hassle dealing with those players.
I've given up on explaining things to players that don't show proficiency with a mic or respond via text. Too many people in this game run with sound off and then they bitch about high levels or stacking.
"Well, turn your sound on!"
"But I don't like the sound, I like my music playing full blast!"
"Yeah ok...you powder monkey with a mic or English speaking skills, stick a mine in his face plz."
*BOOM!*
"YOU HIGH LEVEL STACKING CRUMBUTT!! I'M TELLING!!!"
"Gilder hears ya, Gilder don't care" *Activate Block Feature*
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I suppose we're trying to avoid conflict on both ends. Low experience players don't like losing so harshly, and high experience players get annoyed when people complain about them 'team stacking'.
I understand that for some the team stacking isn't intentional. Players are just trying to have fun with the their friends and clanmates. Maybe they are practicing for a tournament. The reason they all stay together in that lobby is because it's just easier that way. Instead of jumping from lobby to lobby looking for one that just happens to have 8 or so slots open on one side (near impossible to find, unless the lobby is just about dead anyways, nullifying the point of looking for it). So the chances of the organized teams actually running into each other for glorious combat is low. They'd have to bump into each other, their leaders would have to set up a private lobby with a password, give that password to the other 15 people and pile in.
And for a few matches it would be fun, but then it gets kind of boring fighting the same people over and over again, so they'd go their separate ways. Once again being in different lobbies and outclassing the majority of their opponents. And the thought of new opponents every round can get a bit exciting. Things don't get as stale and repetitive for them, encouraging them to stay longer.
So really it's not the stacked teams fault anymore than it's the new players fault; because honestly, they can each see the relative experience on each team and hopefully realize the situation.
All in all it's just a symptom of the lobby system we currently have. Which is why I mentioned a matchmaking/queue system being implemented. Keeps things fresh, and fair (if used along with some kind of balancing system).
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Any system which makes people who want to play together as friends punish that is a bad idea.
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I really feel policing ourselves is the only real solution. I know in our clan, we try to explain to new players what we're doing and that they might want to find another match. They don't always listen and end up being upset by the match anyway. Additionally, we in Wolfpack try to fly against other clans at every opportunity, but sometimes there just isn't another on in enough numbers to fly against.
These are my views almost verbatim... That being said, if the Wolvies ever want to throw down again, The Cohort is up to the challenge!
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More friendly non-competitive clanskrims sounds good. Why not even mix the teams a bit and have fun?
I don't see how making the lobby different than it is atm, with some balance or queue system, wouldn't affect the freedom of choice and solidarity of gamers as individuals. What change would NOT take something away of how it is now? Free for all to join any? Supporting new players more by mentioning the beginners matches isn't that doomed. Some do listen. Might be other reasons than the stomping that makes others leave. Afraid of teamwork, socialising or airhips just not their thing. The game takes a bit of devotion.
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These are my views almost verbatim... That being said, if the Wolvies ever want to throw down again, The Cohort is up to the challenge!
I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we're always up for it. You guys are good and make for a fun lobby between matches xD
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As fantastic as it would be for players to police themselves and set up only fair matches, it doesn't happen. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly we have to point out that it's not always the fault of the 'stacked team'. In many situations, they enter that lobby as a group looking for a challenge from similarly skilled players. But with the large variety of skill ranges, it will often start to fill with people who aren't nearly as experienced and coordinated. Once that happens, another 'stacked' team looking for a match will overlook that particular lobby because there's not enough room for all of them. Chances are they'd be forced to start their own lobby, also hoping for a skilled team to appear and face them, and the problem just multiplies.
Once the teams in the lobby realize that there's a skill gap between them, they can certainly try and correct the situation. This can be done by having one of the ships from the stacked team swap with one of the ships on the other team. We do have the ability to swap ships, you just have to enter the spectate and change places. A swap ship option would only help the problem of people showing up in the middle of the swap and taking their slots. The thing it wouldn't be able to help is people refusing to change places, which can happen and prevent the swap in the first place.
Then there's the likelyhood of the stacked team not wanting to swap. This most likely is not from their desire to win, but their desire to play together. That's why they formed up on the same team in the first place. With all of these blocks preventing an even match, players decide to proceed anyways, which can cause some people to lash out at the end of the match.
After re-raising the issue of stacked teams and the desire for even matches, I've spent more time observing matches in an effort to collect information. Seeing just how many matches are 'stacked', how many that looked stacked but really aren't, the win/loss rate of those matches, and the leave rate of the losing team. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of matches. In all that time, there was only a single match that tried to balance itself.
So can we police ourselves in an effort to bring out fair matches? Yes. Are we likely to do so? No.
We will need some kind of system in the game to force/encourage balanced matches if they're going to occur with higher regularity. One that still lets us play with our friends of course. It's been done in other games, it shouldn't be impossible to do in this one.
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The whole issue of policing ourselves and "stacked teams" in general in my mind is not the fault of the accused stacked team in most scenarios. Most lobbies, even completely fair lobbies where there are balanced teams of equal skill, will eventually go to a stacked scenario. I'm going to use player levels here to pain the picture, even though it doesn't fully describe skill, whatever.
Start with a completely fair lobby, led by a few lvl 10+ crew, with lvl 4-7 core crew and maybe a few good 1-2 players as well. As individuals leave a lobby (to go play another match, play another game, sleep, ect), you inevitably get the level 1-2 new players who will join in, often times very much green, and a lot of times not very cooperative with their shipmates. They tend to weaken one side, and then that team will potentially lose the next match(s). This will discourage the lvl 4-7 base of that team, and they might switch sides or go off to find another lobby where they might have a better chance at winning, potentially finding themselves on the other side of a stacked match. This begets more lvl 1-2 newbies, and before you know it you've got a completely unfair match of stacked players. It's an unfortunate but very redundant scenario I see all the time. If the one side doesn't want to split up because they're all friends or they're trying out a new build combo, all of a sudden they become vilified for stacking teams and making things unfair.
I would totally be behind something where we could fix the match imbalance, but not if it is going to hurt clans or groups of higher level friends. A few Muse guys that I've talked to about this have even agreed that they like the fact that people are grouping up to make more competitive lobbies and matches, they absolutely don't want to limit the possibility of this happening. Anything where it's forcing a clan to separate or swap ships or whatever is basically limiting what groups can do together, and potentially lessening their enjoyment of the game.
Whatever scenario we want to come up with, it shouldn't LIMIT anyone. In order to please some, I fear that you're inevitably going to hurt others. Sure, other games have come up with a good solution, but no other games have THIS much teamwork and cooperation involved, we can't just split teams right down the numbers by level and pretend that this game is going to be anywhere near as enjoyable as it is.
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I don't believe anyone has suggested not allowing friends to fly together, or breaking up clans to force even teams. So I'm not sure why people keep bringing it up. My suggestion is based on the MOBA type games that do matchmaking queues, and... wait for it..... also allow you to group up with friends before entering said matchmaking queue.
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So for example, under this system you would group up with 7 of your friends, filling up two ships. For funsies, lets say one of your friends has a sudden urge to rush off on a long bio break due to questionably cheap mexican food, leaving you with 6 friends.
Step 1:
Form Crew - Invite all your friends to that crew, and enter queue when ready.
Step 2:
Fill up remaining slots. Since your premade crew isn't 100% full, the matchmaking system tosses a compatible person in there. (ie: it won't give you a second captain)
Step 3:
Depending on how the system is created, it will find/create an opposing team of similar skill level (the entire reason I suggested the rank/score system. Since we currently have nothing that quantifies skill)
Step 4:
It places both teams in the pre-match lobby. It is here that you can set up your ships, vote on the map, and finalize your loadouts before the match starts.
Step 5:
Play the match
Step 6:
Post-game lobby. It is at this point you can re-enter the queue or exit and return the main screen.
Step 7:
If you entered the lobby, do whatever. If you re-enter the queue, proceed to Step 2.
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There would have to be more included to make it function well, but it fills just about every desire/need.
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It's still more limiting than compared to what is.
step 1: There is a party function to form crew.
step 2: Would a program or code define who is a "compatible" person? restrict classes? What if captain of a galleon wants to be engineer? And you want to ahve the freedom to choose yourself what class to be or have?
step 3: to get a random similar "skilled" opposing team? You mean it would search fro similar crews and then put them against eachother? Again the option to choose who to invite or to let anyone join or invite a certain clan or party waiting.. Where would that be?
step 4 - 6: exist. what is different to what already is?
what if people want the choice itself more than a program simulating balance? I mean the community of this game is way more helpful and supportive than many other games. If games are unbalanced have people asked for the other team to balance it? And what about fluctuating skills? some matches can be very different due to map, timezone, host, beer, etc..
Many clans have varied skills. level 1 to max. personally i don't see any reason for any form of skillmeter to the game. Ship swap mentioned would be a direct way to balance when asked without any jump risk just the whole ship swap with other ship. Who knows if it'd work? You can't change human nature with programs. it will remain. people usually find a way sooner or later. But with support it can change even if it's the hard way.
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Personally I don't see a problem with the game as far as stacking is concerned. If anybody joins and they see a high level crew they usually leave which leads to an empty lobby so you have people like me who are stuck in an empty lobby because we are high level and you want to encourage this saying if you are to good you cant play anybody else well let me tell you I just spent 30 mins playing a game with a galleon a crew of noobs and an enemy galleon with the same setup lets say a lot of hwacha weren't being used with heavy clip. So instead of encouraging players to fight against a team of good players you say make them all join each other so they can teach them how to play. YAY! FUN! I totally payed to teach other people how to play this game over and over and over and over again because that's the aim of this game, right? teach every one how to play? right? Not really its about creating a team and developing as a team to be the best you can be and how can your team develop if you have to split up all the time to make it fair... The oh so famous quote "life isn't fair" comes into mind here, this game has a great community and I say this all the time but you can't push the CA role on everyone because its what you guys want to do, players like me want to play not teach I'm not a volunteer that's what the CA's are for.
If you want to police the games why don't you just split the community up that'll work. Oh wait it doesn't. This is a game not an elitist group we are all equal. If there is a level 1 and they think they can take on a level 10 let them try I say its an experience they can learn from and will go on to do better from it. Let them teach themselves. Stop trying to make this game a ladder based system just leave it as it is, is it really that bad? are there people leaving by the hundreds as they keep getting pounded on by high players not really, no. I play everyday and I rarely see more than 5 10+ players on during a weekday and any lower than that are usually just messing about in an ordinary game. There is no organised pub stomping you are seeing problems where problems do not exist.
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I could foresee a few slight problems with any sort of a matchmaking system.
This community, as much as I love it, just isn't big enough yet. If the Gents loaded all their best players into two ships on one team, and joined into this proposed "queueing" system, today, right now, about how long of a wait until a "team of similar skill level" is available? Sure, it could happen, but it would probably take quite a while, and there's the distinct possibility of there not being any team whatsoever online at this very moment that would be "similar skill level". In bigger games that use these MOBA style ranking match-ups, I'm assuming there's a lot more than 1,000-2,000 concurrent players. There needs to be a multitude of potential good fits at any given point in time to even consider a matchmaking system. If there's not several teams of very comparable skill level ALREADY waiting in the queue, that ship of Gents is never going to form up and wait for basically nothing. Unfortunately, I really don't think this game has the numbers to do it right now. Hopefully in the future this point is moot.
Then onto the issue of any kind of a "rank/score system" in this game. If it exists and is publically viewable, you are going to have people trying to 'win' the ranking system. No matter what the metric for rank is, win/loss kill/death total games played, etc., you will have a group of players doing nothing but "grinding" that statistic until it's perfect. I could see the possibility of new groups doing in-house matches to boost their own win count. Or people refusing to play/rage quitting matches they cannot very obviously win. This will pretty much invalidate the ranking system. If a new group could jump in and artifically boost their ranking by gaming the system, what is the point of the ranking system?
Second problem with ranking players would be detracting from actual team-work gameplay. Any point in time where someone is playing a match to boost an individual statistic rather than focusing on a teamwork spirit, it detracts from this game. We already deal with this in achievement farmers, and there is no real benefit from having a high level in game. Imagine the problem if there was another ranking, but one that had actual effect on matchmaking or leaderboards and what not.
Also I don't think trying to apply one ranking metric across all three classes would make sense at all. What if there's an engineer who does NOTHING but tank the hull, but his regular captain is very highly strategic and meticulous with planning every move. If they're both on the same ship most of the time, even though one does basically nothing but click and the other puts out considerable effort and expertise every match, would the two of them deserve the same rating score if they decided to queue separately for matches?
The only way to make a ranking score that would NOT detract from gameplay and be able to accurately gauge skill would be to rate an entire red or blue team at once, with specific crew. That way, the only way to increase ranking would be by playing cohesively as a team, with no individual having any opportunity or motive to "go on their own" to boost their personal stats. Problem is, again, this game does not have the number of player to even begin thinking about a system like this. Not to mention the difficulty in putting together the exact same 8-16 people on a very regular basis. Not very likely.
So I have my own idea for a way to deal with "stacked" lobbies. If you enter a lobby and suspect the other team of being "stacked", decide if you want to fight against a "stacked" team. If you don't want to fight against a "stacked" team, find or create a different lobby. Problem solved.
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First to Geno,
I should clarify that that is a hypothetical flow chart for how a queue/matchmaking system would possibly work. A lot of those systems are in the game (and that's good) and some others would have to be created. The overarching idea is to show it's possible to let players play with their friends, while also allowing for greater randomization and fair matches.
Next to Phoenix,
"Personally I don't see a problem with the game as far as stacking is concerned. If anybody joins and they see a high level crew they usually leave which leads to an empty lobby so you have people like me who are stuck in an empty lobby because we are high level..."
"...its about creating a team and developing as a team to be the best you can be and how can your team develop if you have to split up all the time to make it fair..."
You have actually illustrated some of the problem quite nicely, thank you.
Firstly you mention how your high skill team has to split up and work with new players to actually get the match going, and how that's not what you want to do. A very good point indeed. We don't want to force players apart from people they want to play with anymore than we want new players to stop playing after getting beaten by highly skilled and organized teams.
You want to make a great team and fight great opponents, showing off your skills. Shooting down rookies isn't nearly as exciting, and you don't get to be a better player by doing so.
And that's where matchmaking comes in. No longer do you have to sit in a lobby waiting for brave souls to show up. No longer do you have split your team just to get the ball rolling. You make your team, and the system finds enemies for you. Your team doesn't have to split up, and you'll be facing people who know their Spanner from their Heavy Clip. Still not good enough? Then you can always invite another clan for a match.
"Stop trying to make this game a ladder based system just leave it as it is, is it really that bad?"
I'm with you that the game should not be ladder based. I feel that splitting up the community into various chunks just isn't the right move, and would actually make finding matches more difficult. What I'm proposing is just using skill level to balance the teams. That's not saying everyone on the ship has to be between level 4-6, but rather that the average skill rating on each team should be similar. Meaning if you go into the random team queue, you could end up with a lvl 13, 2, 5, 6; and the other ship would have a similar range. (Of course I'm also proposing for a system that does a better job of evaluating skill).
So if you make your own team, and you're all lvl 10+, the system will try to find or generate a team with a similar average lvl.
"are there people leaving by the hundreds as they keep getting pounded on by high players not really, no. I play everyday and I rarely see more than 5 10+ players on during a weekday and any lower than that are usually just messing about in an ordinary game. There is no organised pub stomping you are seeing problems where problems do not exist."
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Now here's some more of the problem. Is the supposed pub stomping causing people to leave the game? You answer no, and then follow up by saying that you rarely see lvl 10+ players. Which is kind of contradictory. If new players stuck around longer, we'd have more mid-high level players. But are there hundreds of new players leaving the game? Yes actually.
http://steamcharts.com/app/209080#1y
That's a graph showing player numbers in GoIO over the past year, you can see high spikes during sale periods, followed by a rapid decline shortly after. During the recent October sale, the population rocketed over 2,000 players online at the same time. Before then it was at a steady 300 or so. Shortly after the sale period, the population drops back down dramatically; almost to exactly what it was before the sale.
You can see that player retention is a problem, particularly new players. This doesn't mean that getting crushed by highly skilled teams is the number one cause, but it is a thing that does in fact happen (I'm currently tracking the % of 'stacked' matches as well as the drop rate of teams that lose to a stacked team. I'm also not using the term 'stacked' in an offensive manner, just stating that one team holds a distinct advantage in experience and/or organization over the opposing team). Did you know that roughly 63% of the losing team in a 'stacked' match will drop out of the lobby?
@ dragonmere,
Everytime I hit enter, someone else responds. xD
I agree with you that the community is kind of small (see above). Part of my original proposal included this in the matchmaking. Where it would try to find a good match, and then start expanding the search to find the 'closest' fit. It may very well still be uneven, and that will reflect in the changes to rank/score post game. ie: if it is forced to match a group of amazingly perfect players against a team of people who keep shooting at their own ship, the winning team will have a negligible increase (if any) to their score/rank, where the losing team will have almost no (if any) decrease to theirs (assuming the better team won. If the underdogs get a victory, it would provide a large boost to them, and large decrease to the other team).
This is why the rank/score system would have to be carefully created. As I mentioned in my original post. >.> that no one read... *depressed*.
I also mention that any change to it could only occur in the matchmaking, meaning that if you did a custom match, it wouldn't make a difference. You'd have to punish people who leave more harshly, as well as making it easier to reconnect. I'll go ahead and try to create a hypothetical rank scoring system (different for each class) as an example of what I'm talking about later.
The system of avoiding stacked lobbies hurts the stacked team (making them wait for a long time or forcing them to 'bait' players in with colorful names). While forcing them to 'balance out' can force them to not play with the friends. And a lot of new players we used to have are not aware of the vast difference between themselves and the other teams of experienced players. With a queue/matchmaking system, they can slowly build up their skill as they get used to the game, and hopefully avoid the pub stomp.
Again, player retention. Our current system isn't very good at it. Maybe making things more balanced, and easier on everyone (high and low experience alike) will change that.
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Ok.. I don't have problems with hypothesis or suggestions but if i think it wouldn't work i will say that and if i think it works i'll support it. The game is based on teamwork generally and a team will also work differently all the time so it's not easy or maybe even possible to make a skilllevel that would work in teh long run and set a standard. Games are alive and change. People change and there are patches.
I just don't want to see limiting or labeling as it were an individuals game as it's team/crew based. Which makes this issue hard. If current options work i don't like a change that would impact the fun, freedom and specialisation of the game. But in the end that doesn't matter so much. Neither of us decide. That is for Muse and their game. They listen but they also decide and so far so good.
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Possible Score/Rank System:
Here's one possible way this could work. It's just a concept, probably won't be adopted, and so obviously nothing is concrete, absolute, or un-debatable. We're also going to skip over the match-making concept.
The theory is to give each player a 'score' in each of their respective roles. In this system, it's a static score that is only changed during post match. The scores range from 0-2000 (totally arbitrary). They can go up or down a maximum of 50 points each match (again, arbitrary). Winning a match will increase your points (+personal score), while losing match will decrease your points (55-personal score). The amount increased or decreased is based upon personal performance and some other factors. Now we math.
First we're going to take the (Avg Team Rank/Avg Enemy Team Rank) to get 'R'. So the higher your rank compared to the enemy, the larger R becomes. The lower your rank compared to the enemy, the lower R becomes.
Captain/Pilot
Depending on the match, the captains role is to keep the ship alive, kill the enemy, capture points, or defend points. Using those as the basis, we come up with this:
Damage Done/Total Damage * 30
(Damage Taken/Deaths)/(Total Damage Taken/Total Deaths) *30
(1-Deaths/Total Deaths) *30
Point Cap/Total Point Cap *30
Point Block/Total Point Block *30
Immediately you'll notice that all of these numbers end up as a ratio or % multiplied by 30 (30 is arbitrary). These numbers are then summed and divided by R (It will cap at 50, even if this number ends up higher). 30 was arbitrarily chosen because you're unlikely to get these numbers very high. For the pilot, that's all the damage done by your ship, taken by your ship. In a relatively even match, they should all be around .25 *30, which is 22.5 when all summed. If the match is perfectly even, R=1, and you'll get 22.5 points for winning, or lose 32.5 (for losing. Obviously). (In retrospect, that seems a little high for an even match, might need to lower the 30 to 20 or something). (Should probably toss in rebuild/repair for the captain/pilot too, with a low score modifier, ie: 5-10).
Why 55-personal score for the loser? Essentially this is so that even if you manage a magical '50', you'll still lose points for losing, even if it's not many. Most of these points are comparisons against the other ships, and highly dependent on your crew. This is just to give a number to add or subtract from your personal ranking.
Gunner
The gunners role is to shoot stuff, kill ships and components, and to a much lesser extant, keep things fixed. With that in mind:
Accuracy(%) * 20
Damage/Total Damage * 50
Component Kills/Total Component Kills * 20
Rebuild (explained below) * 5
Repair/Total Repair * 5
I'll explain the rebuild part below, because I got a little fancy with that. You'll see that the gunning takes a much higher precedent, but they can still get some points for rebuilding. I didn't do ship kills because that would just make gunners fight over the last shot. Instead I did components, which includes all sorts of happy things like engines, balloon, armor, and weapons. Then they'll still get points for damage. You'll notice it has a much higher number, this is because there's going to be engineers and such shooting as well, with lots of people dealing damage, the gunner can't expect too high of a % of the total damage. Then they're all summed, divided by R and still capped at 50. Again, numbers are arbitrary and will probably need to be reworked.
Engineer:
The engineers job is to keep the ship alive through repairs, rebuilds, putting out fires. They also keep the ship buffed and even go so far as to shoot down the enemy. Probably the busiest role.
Repair/Total Repair * 50
Rebuild (see below) * 20
Buff/Total Buffs (includes chem spray)* 10
Fires extinguished/Total Fires * 20
Accuracy * 5
Component Kills/Total Component Kills * 5
(1-Total Damage to Ship/Total Damage All ships)* 30
We're going to avoid explaining the rebuild and go from the bottom up. The 'total damage to ship/total damage all ships' is basically just a safety net for the engineer. There may be situations where their ship takes very little damage, giving them noting to repair/rebuild. So the lower damage the ship takes, the higher that value. Of course the more damage they take, the higher the other values should be (since there's stuff for you to repair/rebuild/put out). Buffs and chemical sprays take up a slot, but aren't very good for repair/rebuilding/ or even putting out fires. They should still get some points for using them, but not enough to make you go crazy with it and avoid helping your ship.
Engineers often act as secondary gunners and should receive some points for that. The numbers chosen might be a little low, especially if they're stuck on the gun a lot and don't need to go about fixing stuff. Wouldn't hurt for them to be higher (remember, arbitrary).
Finally we get to the 'rebuild' bit I've been building up. Rebuilds are nice, but I find them not as important as reaction time. Based off some of the achievements in the game, I thought it might work better to time them. Essentially you get 1 point for rebuilding within 5 seconds of something going down, 0.5 for rebuilding within 10, 0.3 for rebuilding within 20 seconds, and 0.1 after that. You then sum them and divide by the total number of rebuilds done on the ship. You shouldn't have to get the last hit on a rebuild, just help with it. This also ends up giving you a % which you multiply by a number. Then Sum it all up, divide by R and apply the result just as you would any other score. (still capped at 50).
This system uses a lot of comparisons to help set the scores. Essentially it's not how good 'you do' it's how good 'you do compared' to everyone else. Essentially if you gun poorly compared to the other people gunning, or repair not nearly as much as them, or can't capture/block as many points, you're going to gain less points for winning (because you're team essentially carried you), and you'll lose more for losing, since you shouldn't be rated that well.
It takes into account the average rankings on both teams, since it is a team game. If they're much higher ranked than you, you'll lose less points for losing, and win more for winning. But if you're a higher rank than them, it will be the opposite. The closer the rankings, the less impact R has.
Then with a proper matchmaking system, you can set up relatively even teams. Once the scores settle down (it will take players several rounds) players can be relatively confident their ranking is accurate. You do better, you go up. You do worse, you go down. All compared to other players.
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With all that being said, the actual mechanics of how the rankings work should be hidden. This is just showing an example of how a system could work in this kind of game. I'd still try to have ranks shown, just so players know where they stand and what they're up against in a match. With the low population, players will likely end up against players who have a significantly higher or lower rank. The system is still set so that they won't be overtly affected by it, but it'll help them understand why the results were how they were. (There's other little quirks that would have to be employed, like reconnecting limits tweaked, punishment for leaving a match, etc)
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Can you give an example what it would do and why say 5 matches of 2 vs 2 ?
Seeing the match and skill number i come to think of bf3 which i played a couple years actively that also has something similar. But it doesn't work there. it's just something more individual that doesn't really tell the persons actual skill-level vs calculated skillnumber per map. The hitreg fluctuates badly, the weapon balance is lacking and how people play around you affects your own gameplay. Statspadding and attacking bases is common. It could have been an ok game but the extra fuss, leveling to 145, way too many achievements, unlocks and logging just kills it for the common casual player. And the game has squads but it's rare to see anyone do actual teamwork as they just focus on their own stats and play more than the real cooperation. the "do what it takes to achieve x of y". Partly reason for the scepticism along with other points already made.
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Totally understandable. One way to avoid players like that is to not reveal how starts are calculated, although in this case they're all pretty obvious and common thing. Since they only affect your rank, and the only way to rank up is to win; I'd expect most people to be doing their best teamwise. Personally I don't think it's plausible to do separate ranks for different maps, ships, weapons, etc. So it'll never be perfect, it'll just be a pretty good guess.
For the example, we're going to be following a few players through different scenarios. (Also I'm taking out component kills because it seems redundant)
We'll start off with Johnny, a solo player who just gets hooked up with random teams. This is Johnny's first time playing GoI, so all his ranks start at 1000. He queues up and gets tossed into a match as a gunner. This match goes pretty rough, Johnny is a terrible gunner, but they still manage to squeak out a win. Both teams have an average rank of 1200.
Accuracy(%)=0.3 * 20
Damage/Total Damage=0.08 * 50
Rebuild (explained below)=0.0 * 5
Repair/Total Repair=0.001 *5
Sum = 10
Giving him a score of about 10 (rounded), since they're equal teams. With their win, his gunner ranks goes up to 1010.
He re-enters the queue and plays a gunner again which a whole new team, this time he has a better idea of what he's doing. His avg team rank is 1030, and the enemy is 1250. They end up winning. His stats this time are:
Accuracy(%)=0.5 * 20
Damage/Total Damage=0.10 * 50
Rebuild (explained below)=0.4 * 5
Repair/Total Repair=0.01 *5
Sum=17.05
Giving him a +21 (rounded up). Why not 17.05? Because his team had a smaller avg rank than the other enemy team. His score was divided by (1030/1250). His new gunner rank is 1031. As you can see, players will tend not to skyrocket up in the ranks.
He goes again, getting a gunner, new team. This time his avg team rank is 1200, and the enemies avg is 990. His team seems to have an edge, and he does about the same as last time, but they end up losing!
Accuracy(%)=0.55 * 20
Damage/Total Damage=0.09 * 50
Rebuild (explained below)=0.4 * 5
Repair/Total Repair=0.02 *5
Sum = 17.6
R=1200/990 = 1.2121
His personal score is 14.52 (his team had a higher rank, causing a score penalty. The greater the difference, the bigger the penalty/reward).
Since he lost, his score is 55-14.52 = 40.48
Making his new gunner rank 991.
His low performance in previous matches caused a small climb, but this poor performance along with his team outranking the enemy and still losing caused a much larger decrease.
Now we'll look into two trickier scenarios
Johnny plays again, and has the best game of his life! He's hitting just about everything and wrecking the enemy team. But the engineers on his team just aren't paying attention and the enemies get a win! Booo~! In this match, their avg rank was equal.
Accuracy(%)=0.8 * 20
Damage/Total Damage=0.30 * 50
Rebuild (explained below)=0.8 * 5
Repair/Total Repair=0.1 *5
Sum=35.5
Loss = 55-35.5 = 19 (rounded down). Making his new rank 972. You can see that his great performance cause a much smaller decrease (although not as small as his increases for performance. Maybe need to tweak the numbers?)
His last match for the day. He's full of confidence, but the captain is driving like a complete scrub, causing him to miss nearly all his shots! His avg team rank is 900 while the enemy is 1200.
Accuracy(%)=0.1 * 20
Damage/Total Damage=0.02 * 50
Rebuild (explained below)=0.4 * 5
Repair/Total Repair=0.02 *5
Sum = 5.1
R=900/1200=0.75, making his score 6.8. Obscenely low. With the loss, he gets a -48. Quite a huge loss, and not even his fault!
This is probably the most glaring problem in my proposed ranking system. Along with pilots having an abysmal crew. I can find a way to compensate for engineers dealing with bad team mates, but how do manage with gunners? You can't reward them for missing, and you can't give them points for your ship not taking damage like the engineers. You can't give them points for the ship taking damage either, because that could lead to a crazy amount of points. Or maybe that's ok?
The other poor scenario being a captain/pilot with a terrible crew. How do you lessen the severity of a loss (or the reward for the win) when you crew doesn't shoot or fix well? I suppose one method could be to alter the (total damage/deaths)/(total damage everyone/total deaths everyone). To where you get a higher % for taking less damage before a death? I think that would work. Maybe. If you were a good pilot, and they were terrible engineers, they wouldn't fix it as much before you were taken out. But if you were a bad pilot, and they were bad engineers, it'd be the same situation. Although I suppose the other parts of your score would reflect that. So yeah, that could be changed.
If an engineer is good on a bad team, they can still get a high score by repairing and rebuilding rapidly. However, if an engineer is on a great team, there's not a lot to repair/rebuild, and buffing and such only gets you so far. That's why there's the (1-Total Damage to Ship/Total Damage All ships). The less damage you take, the higher your score. However, you can still be a bad engineer and take no damage. And again, the other parts of your score should represent that.
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So it's far from perfect, but it's a feasible rough idea. You do well, you get more points for winning, and lose less for losing. You do poorly, you earn less for winning, and lose more for losing. This is all based on everyone else's performance as well, and even the estimated team balance. And while it can't perfectly protect you from bad players on your team, their poor performance should have already lowered their rank in previous matches, lowering your team's avg rank; and thus causing you to get a higher reward for winning, and a lower penalty for losing.
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So I have a question if you do well in a game against high levels you get more points, what about the high levels I guess they just get a crap score which is, I'm also guessing, their fault for playing in a lower level lobby. however this is the only lobby that had any spots available what happens to them? do they get a fair score?
You aren't thinking about high levels only low there are more players here than just the ones that play for one game and leave there are the dedicated players whose scores will be affected by this.
Also you seem to think that there are a lot of high level players in this game which on an average day there aren't.
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Well you can guess the outcome based on the system. In this fictional rank system, there's a queue system that tries to match players as best it can to players of a similar rank. (In my head it uses the avg rank of each team, meaning you can have a whole rainbow of different ranks).
There will certainly be times the high ranks have to face the low ranks. In most situations the high ranks will win. They will receive a lower addition to their score than if they played just as well against a similar ranked team. In the same way that the lower rank team will lose less points. If this were an mmorpg, you could compare it to killing mobs for experience. Killing mobs lower than your level gives less exp, while killing things around your level gives average exp, and killing the things much higher than your lvl give great exp. It'd be silly to give players a massive, or even regular score increase for crushing a team that barely poses a challenge.
That's fair. Essentially these high rank teams are near the top of the charts anyways, and the score doesn't do anything but increase your rank. Once the match is over, that personal score you got is gone, and all your left with is your rank number, which is already high.
I can't imagine how this favors one skill level over another, as it's only purpose is to determine skill level.
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So we lead in with an example. We'll pick a player on each side, the captains. The high rank team is 1800, the low rank is 600. That's an R of 3 for High, and 0.3333 for Low. We'll say it's a death match. It ends up being a slaughter, 5-0.
Captain High Rank (1800):
Damage Done/Total Damage=0.3 * 30
(Damage Taken/Deaths)/(Total Damage Taken/Total Deaths)=0.4 *30
(1-Deaths/Total Deaths)=1*30
Sum = 51. They've done so well they broke the 50 point cap on skill alone.
Captain Low Rank (600):
Damage Done/Total Damage=0.2 * 30
(Damage Taken/Deaths)/(Total Damage Taken/Total Deaths)=0.1 *30
(1-Deaths/Total Deaths)=0.4 *30
Sum=21, a pretty average score (they did some damage)
High rank wins, their new rank is 1800+ 51/3 = 1817
Low rank loses, their new rank is 600-(55-21/0.333)= 595 (21/0.333 > 50, and therefore gets capped at 50)
Low rank probably would have lost more points, I think I set the damage they did a little high. But the point stands.
High rank has an increase, low rank has a decrease. What more could you want?
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The fact that high ranks have to lose points because of the opponents they faced it shouldn't matter who you face also its unfair on the lower levels as they lost points when they faced a high level captain surely they should get points just for trying it.
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Points don't do anything besides give a rough estimate of your rank. In a system where you gain points by losing, everyone starts hitting the 2000 cap. You could always have no cap, but then the gap in skill level just increases infinitely, and you're back to square one.
Winning earns your points. The greater the enemy, the greater the points. Losing loses you points. The greater the enemy, the less the points lost.
Ideally you'd be facing people around your rank -most of the time-. Losing lowers your points, but the better you do compared to the other players, the less you lose. Winning will earn you points, but if you do awful, they won't go up very much.
Ultimately the idea is to create a nice spread of players across the ranks. Inevitably the best players will end up on the top, and the worst will inhabit the bottom.
Again, points don't do anything. It's not like money, or credits, or even a score in a classic video game.
And a system that rewards points purely on a win/loss neglects individual skill. You could have a terrible player constantly group with great players and shoot up rapidly with them. You could have a great player rapidly sink in rank by being paired with awful players. It stops being an individual rank, and more about how many times you get lucky with a good team (or unlucky with a bad team). By putting the individual element in there, players rise and fall at different rates based upon their relative performance.
And again, if you win, you get points. You lose, you lose points. The amount of either depends on the difference between the ranks. Going back to the mmorpg analogy, you're asking to get a level up from killing lvl 1 slimes on your level 70 character.
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Not at all what I'm actually asking is why is this system better than the one we already have there is no "Oh youre better as you have played more games than us and won" it's your better because you have played hundreds of games and have earned valuable knowledge not based on statistics but on gameplay actually gameplay not your so called gameplay like how many parts did you rebuild and so on and so forth. In my ship I aim to have my ship in the least vulnerable places at the least nice time giving my crew the ability to keep the ship alive without having to not man the guns, all the stats you use like kill parts and repair stuff are very likely to be messed around, what about support ships ones that weaken the enemy but destroy no real parts, what about when you have a captain that only ever rams so you never have a chance to fire or when you are always getting ganged and so you don't have time to repair, there are so many things you cant factor into this idea merely because they aren't quantifiable.
The system we have shows skill based on achievements, yes, but these achievements are hard as hell to get sometimes, so thats one reason we dont need points, skill is determined through actual gameplay and levels are only seen as a rough idea, which are more often accurate than not, of their skill. Also if we were to do this points based we cant expect the people who are good at the game but play rarely to get a good level I know a few level 8s who rarely play more than once every two weeks but they got to level 8 as they are good they could get through the achievements as they are good players.
I don't like seeing this game as an mmorpg its not its an airship combat simulator there is no role play here so stop using that analogy it doesn't work.
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???
Yeah.. The "what" got described a bit better.. but i still lack an answer for "why" and fail to see how this would really decrease stacking without the cost of the fun, casual or even creative aspect. What i see from it is it would instead increase players wanting to go to good teams, good crews, good clans and try to maintain their scores and forced to improve constantly to not lose an upwards curve or battling for something else than the teamwork. And wouldn't that end up as stacking teams?
The ranks aren't important in goi imo since it goes to 15. Skill shouldn't define people. The attitude and social skills may define more in GOI. The achievements are well thought through to enhance teamwork.. "help your teammate rebuild 150 engines" for example. What is improved, how would it help make goi a better game?
To improve what is it just needs improved communication and teamwork.
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I figured the 'why' had been beaten half to death. The issue being unbalanced matches being not very enjoyable to everyone involved. Higher skilled players tend to like facing players their own skill level, where lower rank players like to face people around their skill level. No one likes an easy win, and no one likes being absolutely stomped. Then you can add in lobby wait times for high ranked players to get a challenger, trying to stick with playing with friends instead of being forced to swap teams, player retention, etc, etc.
Our current system more or less forces unfavorable teams to occur. This is from the differences in experience with GoIO, as well as our desire to play with our friends. They generally do not start with the intention of going pubstomping. You start playing with your friends, maybe against another clan, play a few rounds, and then one team ends up leaving. Your team wants to play more and the enemy ends up filling with random relatively low experience players. A series of 5-0/1 matches occur. The newer players call hacks, complain about stacked teams, etc; and very often end up leaving. It's unsavory for everyone. The 'stacked' team ends up having to leave and find a new lobby, or do some switch swapping to balance out the teams. This often results in them not being able to play with their friends in a way they wanted.
If you don't believe team stacking happens, I don't believe even a pile of screenshots and videos could change your mind. I'm actually looking at one right now.
The important thing to restate is that we're not trying to vilify the high skill teamed. They've essentially achieved the GoIO dream, putting together a great crew that communicates well and gets things done. However, they did not achieve this to whomp on new players, they want a 'real' fight.
So team stacking happens, and it is a problem. Is it a big problem? It's hard to say. On some days it's tough to find an imbalanced match, on other days it seems that every other match seems heavily skewed. A lot of people never say a word about it, while sometimes players are very vocal about the conditions of the match. Which causes a response from the other team, which is not very often positive.
So why would matchmaking help?
-Balanced teams. The main objective is to create a competitive atmosphere by placing teams against each other who have 'as close as possible' skill level and chance to win. This is more likely to end up with closer, more intense matches.
-Teamwork. The system I proposed is in no way the only idea. However, it does emphasize teamwork. You have a much higher chance of winning with an organized team than an unorganized one. This will reflect itself in player ranks. Those that don't communicate and don't work together will end up getting lower scores. While those who do will be higher up. You're ability to work with others highly reflects on your skill.
-Fairness. So what about people trying to max out their rank? Remember that the stats should be invisible. They have no idea what they are, what they do, or how they're calculated. People who end up on a team they don't like and immediately leave should be penalized, the same in any other game where this happens. GoIO is very team dependent. Let's take a look at the MOBA style games. Not as highly team dependent (Nothing can compete with GoIO level of teamwork required) but still up there. Leaving a match essentially puts you in timeout, requiring your to wait a while before you can join a new match. But still allowing you to connect to the old one. Could easily do that.
The current system we have is nice, but does lead to the match imbalance problems. And the achievement system only represents the amount of achievements you've completed. I'd argue that it does not actually support teamwork, as I've seen a lot of cases to the opposite. Players running around only buffing while the ship is under fire to get their buff achievement, captains only going for rams to get ram kills, or just keeping moonshine on for 240 seconds straight while in a match. Gunners refusing to use ammo appropriate for the guns because their achievement requires different ammo. I've even seen people join as pilot when there already was one, just to get some of their rebuilding achievements.
I can't see how it takes away from fun or creativity. You still get all your loadout choices, you pick your ship, vote on the map, and still choose how you want to play. And the old 'make your own match' option should still exist for those wanting to play around with just flamethrowers or even do a tournament. The matchmaking is just for balancing things out, and randomizing them a little. You don't have to fight the same people over and over again, and you can go in solo and meet lots of different people and play styles. It essentially is just an automated lobby system, finding matches for you that you can feel confident in doing well in; instead of forcing you to enter and leave lobbies over and over again manually, looking for something that fits you.
Then it also gives player something else to do. Having clans and teams stay active longer as they vie for the top of the ranks, getting in some real significant practice against other similarly skilled teams (instead of being forced to plow through lvl 3's and such).
And finally, I am hoping that it would increase player retention. We can't seem to keep new players around long, which can be seen in the steam charts link I posted. A system change such as this might be just the safety net they need, giving them a learning curve, allowing them to improve their skills at their own pace. Not the 'sink or swim' method we have had.
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I don't believe i said it ain't happening. i guess we go on our own assumptions and opinions. which is fine.
I assume this idea would be a coding nightmare and what some peoples motives are for joining/leaving/playing is speculative. Not every gamer is a teamwork player.
It just sounds contradictive to me. I'll leave it at that.
Appretiate your effort in answering. Good luck with it.
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I usually just do a 'blanket' response, trying to cover all the points from people above. Which is why my posts tend to be so long winded and repetitive, sorry about that. D;
But right now we're faced with the exact same player base. Changing how the system works will not change that. Also I like to pretend that the suggested design filters down players that don't cooperate, as they tend to have poor performance anyways (and also have a lower chance of winning). Since it's hopefully randomized, you shouldn't get paired with them as often, and will create a larger gap in your ranks. And if you really really want to avoid players like that, you just have to form your own team ahead of time. Something that's always been encouraged in GoIO. This system just makes it so that you don't -have- to premake your team for a decent chance of victory.
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But we like pre-making our teams it gives us a reason to be social with other people it also lets leave other people that we don't like alone. The system we have right now isn't perfect but we try to do our best not to abuse it and I think that everyone who likes this game does. So what if we don't win every fight its not always about the victory its about what you did in the game the only time I care about winning is for doing an achievement, which is not very often anymore, so we get a hell of a lot of fun out of just being on a ship together and shooting enemies without having to worry that our actions will affect us and the enemy in a game-based way.
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The biggest problem is people insisting that they stay on the same team. I have no idea how it's supposed to make the game more fun when a coordinated team of 8 people mercilessly roflstomps randoms until they alt-f4. The easiest and most fun solution is to simply have one of the crews change teams. 1 coordinated crew + 1 random crew is usually pretty equal, and it's a really quick way to improve your skill at the game when you lose to someone you play with on a regular basis. Randoms get carried, pros get a challenge, and everyone wins.
I just really hate this stacking bullshit where you hop into a game and 8 people who only play to win refuse to risk losing a game. It makes it where I can't casually play the game in random groups and expect to have fun, and it sucks.
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I don't think many teams go into it thinking "oh I can't wait to smash some low level pubbies" I think it's more of "oh I can't wait to play with my friends since we know each others playstyles and can play properly"
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It's prob not gonna happen, refering to fireside chat friday. One slight possibility a pro level restricted to which you could invite under 100 matches players, but who knows?
:-\
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Yeah in the Dev's fireside chat, they definitely didn't like the idea of putting a level cap on a match when setting it up. They really want to distinguish between skill level and community level. Skill level is measurable, but they said specifically they don't like the idea of discriminating based on skill level. They would be much more up to distinguishing based on your level of cooperation, as in how well you coordinate with others, if you are a team player, ect. The problem is, there's no way to quantify this value.
I suggested making the level caps be above 100 matches played only, still not a perfect solution, but way better than drawing a line at a person's level, and definitely way easier and more feasible than creating an advanced algorithm to measure a players skill and put people together against equally matched players. Regardless, the Devs said they didn't really like the idea of segregating, so most likely nothing is gonna come of this any time soon. The only solution is to just be aware of other people's game experience and try not to ruin other people's fun.
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The only solution is to just be aware of other people's game experience and try not to ruin other people's fun.
This, x1000
I feel part of the problem may be that while the game feels 'familiar' at it's surface to anyone who has spent any amount of time playing shooters, when delving deeper the similarities stop at being in first-person and shooting guns. The actual gameplay is considerably different from most games I've played, and for a new player that realization can take a bit of time.
Aside from what NoWuffo said, the best solution I can come up with is take a deep breath, break into your patients reserve, and teach. Today's new player is tomorrow's veteran. Do what you can to speed that process xD
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i don't really think there should be a penalty. rarely do people stay in lobbies if the teams are heavily unbalanced, especially staying on the outmatched team. the wait is penalty enough, i think. 2 premade teams probably have to wait 15 mins for people that don't care/don't know any better to join the game and stay in, or another good premade team to waltz in. and the long wait itself makes people antsy and leave for faster lobbies too. And when the game does begin and the stacked team completely obliterates the other team, well no one is going to stay and they'll have to wait 15 more minutes lol
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-snip-
Aside from what NoWuffo said, the best solution I can come up with is take a deep breath, break into your patients reserve, and teach. Today's new player is tomorrow's veteran. Do what you can to speed that process xD
-snip-
And when the game does begin and the stacked team completely obliterates the other team, well no one is going to stay and they'll have to wait 15 more minutes lol
My biggest concern is this. I couldn't give two shakes and twirl about unbalanced matches if people enjoy playing them, or at the very least bear with them. It's just something that happens. But if this is what's causing new players to not stick around, then it's an issue. Again, I direct your attention to this graph:
http://steamcharts.com/app/209080#6m
(http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu266/thbrown07/GoIO_6MonthGraph.png)
Where you can see the obvious spikes (corresponding to sales) and falls of the playerbase. While a rapid influx is nice, more or less all of those new players seem to drop out of the game shortly after. One reason for this is the pubstomping (intentional or not). We all know that players can get a little ragey after such an event, especially new and unexperienced players. While it may or may not be the biggest cause of not keeping new players around, it's one of the most obvious, and something we can fix.
Like Garou and others pointed out, a very nice solution would be for all the vets to put on their big kid pants and help these newer players out. And as others still have pointed out, that's not going to happen. Not because some of us don't want to help, but because not everyone is willing to go to these lengths. Most people are here to play a game and have fun, not babysit and do community service; and we have to respect that. Which is why we're looking at alternate solutions.
I respect and support Muse's decision to not segregate the players, but there are other ways of doing it.
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I respect and support Muse's decision to not segregate the players, but there are other ways of doing it.
If you want to take the time to program a match selection yourself, I'm sure Muse would love to see your work. However I don't think there's a magic fix to this problem. We've recognized the issue, we've acknowledged it from all sides, but let's not beat a dead horse here. Everyone has said their main points, we're now talking in circles. Let's all be more aware of the problem, but put this thread to bed. Thanks for everyone's contributions.
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https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2649.0.html (Match Sorting/Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2570.0.html (Match Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2188.0.html (Match Balance/Ranking)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1902.0.html (Match Balance/Ranking/Matchmaking)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1806.0.html (Pub Stomping)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1674.0.html (Level Sorting/Match Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1497.0.html (Level Sorting/Match Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1295.0.html (Matchmaking/Match Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1244.0.html (Queue/Matchmaking)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,379.0.html (Pub Stomping/Teaching New Players)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,418.0.html (Level Sorting)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,491.0.html (Matchmaking/Ranking/Match Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,225.0.html (Match Balance)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2389.0.html (Pub Stomping)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2227.0.html (Pub Stomping)
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,2325.0.html (Level Sorting)
and many, many more. I didn't bother to include examples of threads about players leaving during a match (do to unfair teams) either; or even dig up threads from the old forums. The fact that the issue continually pops up over and over again should be a pretty glaring red flag. Being aware of the issue doesn't make it go away.
There is no magic fix anymore than there is a single perfect solution.
At this point we're left with a few options. If you don't think this is a problem, don't believe there can be a solution to it, or simply don't want it to be solved; thank you. Your opinion has been noted, and you do not need to reject any suggestion to the latter with one of those reasons. (Please feel free to use constructive reasons, ie: Isn't fair for all levels, would split up the population too small, I don't want to be labeled with a rank, that method wouldn't let me play with my friends, etc).
On the other hand, if you find that this is a problem and wish to continue a productive discussion about the possibilities, we'd love to hear it. We may not be able to find a good solution, but we love the community and game enough to try.
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I'm legitimately very confused as to where you get the 'information' that player retention is related to stacked matches. Yes, after the promotions end, the game loses concurrent logins. This is more likely due to the nature of people who purchase a game solely because it is on sale, or due to the recommendation of popular YouTubers. A few days/weeks after playing the game, an overwhelming majority of them will move on to whatever is on sale or recommended by popular YouTubers next. I see nothing to indicate this has to do with faults in the game or the actions of our community. This is the nature of the promotional channels that Guns of Icarus has been very successful in.
I feel as though you're accusing certain unnamed players, clans, groups or even play-styles of a negative impact on the game that simply isn't as definite as you believe. I would include myself in this group, as a member of a publicly competitive clan, and one that plays with it's own crews whenever possible. I could definitely be accused of "stacking". As such, I take the accusation that I am part of a cause of players leaving the game fairly seriously. Stating that some teams don't do it 'intentionally' doesn't negate the fact that you are still saying their actions are always detrimental. They aren't always. It can make some people upset, I'll agree. But to be completely honest, I probably get just as upset at team members who refuse to coordinate. It's just a matter of perspective.
I appreciate the time and effort you're putting into this. I really do. I just don't believe that any part of this community should be vilified as completely as you're suggesting. I feel as though you're trying to state your own personal opinion as a matter of fact. Does "stacking" happen? Yes. Does it make some people angry sometimes? Sure. That's about the only things that you can say for a fact. Anything else is conjecture. In my opinion, 'stacking' is not game breaking. In fact, you can dig up tons of posts on this topic, some very old, and yet the game is still running smoothly. In this game as a whole, we actually do a really great job of welcoming, training, and retaining new players.
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tl;dr: its not my fault if people are leaving and roflstomping randoms gives newbies a great first-impression that would never drive anyone away for good
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tl;dr: its not my fault if people are leaving and roflstomping randoms gives newbies a great first-impression that would never drive anyone away for good
That is NOT the way conversations will be conducted on this forum. Chiding remarks and personal attacks are low class and not the discussions that should be taking place. Unless anyone has any specific comments about the original topic at hand, everyone please drop it.
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my last 2 cents on this.
The graphs still show a slow rise of players from the summer. I'm sure it will continue. On store main page the whole steam community player count fluctuates too. Game server graphs have fluctuations. Very rarely you get a server that stays full or almost full 24/7.
I've not seen angry people even after stomps for some time. If treated with respect i guess they still have fun. If they leave a match how can we know what percentage leave the game and never play it or just go look for another lobby? That's up to the gamer himself. We shouldn't force people into their own decisions.
With player retention (low numbers in active players) there are other reasons, i believe. Some wait for adventure mode, lately trends in gaming of just getting games and not getting into them properly, teamwork isn't everyones cup of tea, promoting of the game needs more work, more pass of word out to friends needed.
I didn't know before i played that this game had been released a year ago. I stumbled across it half by accident in watching youtube reviewers.
However.. I bet this anniversary will get a new rise of people to the game.
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Jesus Christ this is really simple guys: if you don't like playing against a pre-made team, leave that lobby. No one is forcing you to be there. There are plenty of lobbies without pre-mades in them. Instead of trying to break up a group of friends trying to have fun together, why don't you just go to another lobby? Is that so freaking hard?
What kind of basic high school degree does it take to realize that in a co-op teamwork based game, people are going to team up and win games based on friendship and communication. Don't like it? You are the one choosing to play a game that embraces these ideals.
Oh and pre-mades don't have some secret tricks that you don't have. We all have chat and voice chat. Why don't you take the challenge we set and raise the bar for yourself. Improve your own team's communication. Rather than trying to bring down a well organized team, try improving your own team's communication and organization.
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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.
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So we change tutorial and quick join button places but leave the names. problem solved. :D
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Make sure to keep this thread friendly, guys. Posts attacking certain clans or players are not acceptable.
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Making an appearance in another spirited thread! Greetings everyone.
Let's deal with some of the thoughts and ideas that I've read in the last 2 pages.
1. Is "team stacking" an issue? I believe that it is. And, after thinking through it for quite a while, we are implementing 2 things for next sprint. A scrambling system and a slot and ship switch request system. Let me not go into the details right now (we'll start talking about it more as soon as next week), as we are still working out the details of design. But it is aiming to be a balanced approach that takes both sides (the people who want to hang out and play together, and the people who face consistent superior combat prowess) into account. This system is also designed to make organizing clan, competitive, and dev matches a bit easier as well.
2. Should we implement a full on match making system? Or an "advanced" player only match like the novice match? This one is trickier given the way we currently set up matches and the way we do leveling. With advanced players, the way to categorize this is very arbitrary given that our game is essentially skilled based, and even a dedicated crew and team can have players with wide ranges of levels. And because a team can comprise of different roles, each with its own rank, and the entire team composition can have players with wide range of levels, this makes match making use cases more difficult to satisfy. For co-op though, we are thinking to incorporate a more full on match-making system, with crew formation and party systems to complement for people who wanted dedicated crews and teams. This is in part because the crew composition requirements are not as stringent for co-op, and also because this gives player quicker access to matches and shorter wait time. But obviously this is something that we've been thinking about a lot, and are still thinking hard about.
3. How is the game doing in general. I think we are doing pretty good all things considered. Our concurrent base has gone up slowly over time, in the absence of dedicated and constant promotional pushes. We've looked at attrition post events, and within 1-2 weeks, a comparable game generally has over 50% attribution or more. Meaning that the spikes in the graph that Thomas pulled do occur and are not unusual. In the long run, people have a ton of game choices to make, and games that take up people's time. And we are actually really fortunate that we have a pretty awesome community and core group(s) of players that would want to spend time in our game over a thousand other games. Can't tell you how much of an honor that is. Most games launched last year don't get to sit here and chat with a still active and vibrant community. Over the past year, looking back at some of the alpha screenshots we took, the game is quite different now for the better, and the biggest reason why I think is that we are at least a bit smart enough to listen to you guys. :D
So while attrition has a lot of factors, some beyond our control, we do still have an obligation to keep improving, because some of it is because of the game itself, and are issues we need to overcome to make the overall game experience better.
I think ultimately, the best way to grow our game is still for you guys to keep giving us great feedback, and for us to keep improving, and for you guys to keep helping us getting the word out.
With co-op and Adventure Mode, there are in a lot of ways new games within the umbrella of GoIO, and I think that they will add more variety. Right now, we are obviously still working on all kinds of stuff to improve Skirmish, but work on co-op has begun in earnest for a while now. Hopefully we'll have stuff for people to try pretty soon.
I hope that this covered a lot of the concerns and points raised here.
I just want to say that, I take everyone's comments as constructive criticism and feedback. Everyone here cares about the game and is passionate, and for me that's awesome to see. When you guys are debating the points, just keep in mind that at the end of the day, everyone cares, so let's please respect each others' opinions.
Have a great weekend! Thanks! Howard
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Well as silly as this post has gotten (hence why I avoid it like the plague) I will say the Bounty system, as is, doesn't help things in it's current state.
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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.
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So we change tutorial and quick join button places but leave the names. problem solved. :D
Haha, if only.
And thanks for that update howard! I'm curious to see what you guys have in mind.
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-snip-
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.
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.
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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:
(http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu266/thbrown07/GoIO_RankRatioW_Oct23.png)
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:
(http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu266/thbrown07/TeamStack.png)
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:
(http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu266/thbrown07/TeamBalanced.png)
And this is my personal favorite, the % of stacked matches occurring at any time:
(http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu266/thbrown07/GoIO_TeamStackRatio_Oct23.png)
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.
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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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What I've thought about doing in AK is having a Ship dedicated to hunting bounties, really the only way to battle the stacked WANTED teams, is with stacked teams of Bounty Hunters. I think maybe adding an emblem such as a jolly roger next to matches containing WANTED players (similar to the star you guys use on devgames) would help also.
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You're saying you don't like "Team Stacking"? You must mean... "Team Deathmatch", right?
It's got those keywords in it so you know exactly what you're getting yourself into before you join a session..
"Team" - A number of persons(plural) forming one of the sides in a game or contest
"Death" - The act of dying; the end of life
"Match" - A game or contest in which two or more contestants or teams oppose each other
So it's basically a [Team] of people working together simultaneously in a coordinated attack to bring [Death] to their enemy, using [Teamwork] during a particular [Match]. If they all attacked each other individually.. That's.. not really.. Teamwork..
What you're looking for is a "Duel". You simply want to duel to the death in an honorable and fair 1v1 fight to test your raw, solo skill level without any distraction.
What you aren't looking for is a test of leadership, cooperation, or grasp on large scale strategy.
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So if you were to pose a team of professional boxers against a team of moderately belligerent drunkards in a cage match, this would be perfectly acceptable, yes?
Not sure if what you have there is a straw man, but it certainly isn't a relevant argument in most respects. People aren't saying they don't want to play as a team (At least, I'm not) but rather they don't want the super MLG pro squad with 2 ships all on vent running their number crunched pre-coordinated strategies against a handful of newbies who pugged together a crew, match after match after match.
If the ships were team scrambled or the crews were scrambled this would at least give some semblance of balance and benefit as the super newbie crew can now closely observe and coordinate with the super MLG team and (in theory) learn a bit more about the workins of the game, aside from how it feels to get flamethrowerballonspammgoombastomped.
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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)
You choose which category you want to be in.
Unfortunately, without some form of direction in how to become better (even if it requires FORCING them in said direction) and nothing but crushing defeats without said knowledge, a person will care less and put less effort into the matches until eventually they just stop playing the game all together.
I know this, because ultimately this is what some of my friends and even I myself in the past have done. I've put some effort into finding a role that suits me, playing it well and avoiding lost causes that I know will only frustrate me. But not everyone will take such an effort unless they are given some guidance or incentive to do so. They want to play the game to have fun, and if they have fun, then they will invest themselves into it more.
It seems many forget how it was like just starting to play GOI =/
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So your friends stopped playing the game cause they faced "stacked" teams.
I think you guys mainly played together. This means that you were a "stacked" team. Even if it seems you guys didnt had the knowledge to really pupstomp you already made the first step.
What many so called "stacked" teams do is just playing together cause they like it more to play together than with some random dudes who just dont listen.
Cant speak for everyone but when im onboard with someone and i see him doing something odd i recommend sth different. If they are higher lvl i just ask for the reason but thats another point.
I even give basic hints to enemys when im in a so called "stacked" team.
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Bein' grounded to dust by multiple well coordinated enemy ships ought to teach the newbies a little something about teamwork. Because obviously from level 1 to level 15, we all get the same ships, weapons, items, and ammo... Therefore the only advantage to be had comes from teamwork, tactics and timing, so they shouldn't feel the game is so unfair.
...but you're right though, they do usually just get demotivated and quit like babies... instead of deciding to start making friends and capitalizing on the new strategy they just witnessed like I do... They just quit, and then Muse has less money to keep this amazing game advancing.
My final solution would be a new game type: Duel Matches
Just 2 players - 1v1 - First one to 3 points wins
Both newbies and pros alike would love that, and matches would be easy to find. That or Free-For-All.
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We had a 'duel' map at one point (Duel at Dawn) (1v1), but it felt like it was drifting away from the core concepts of teamwork, so it was changed to a 2v2. I don't think they're likely to go that route again, but you never know.
As for the team stacking, we don't want to punish friends flying together, but we also want to protect random players from being stomped into pudding. Sure it can encourage some people to try harder, but others just get demoralized or upset. The new features should allow players to try and maintain fair matches if they so desire, without ruining the experience with their friends.