Guns Of Icarus Online
Info => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Wundsalz on October 20, 2014, 02:41:03 pm
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Matchmaking fills ships with more than 1 gunner
I just wanted to play as a gunner and used the match making system to find a lobby. The matchmaking system put me into ships which already had a gunner 3 times in a row. That's bad because you've designed GoIO in a way that having more than one gunner is not a viable option on any ship with any loadout. Hence I'd appreciate if you'd try to fill ships with 1 captain, 1 gunner and 2 engineers by default (unless the captain has set recommended loadouts in which case the classes suggested there should be used).
Its not possible to change the class after a match started
with the 3rd re-try, the system put me into a match which started immediately after I've joined the lobby. Unfortunatly I've been a second gunner yet again.
Before the patch it was possible to change ones class after the match started by hoping out of the game and rejoining manually via friendlist or by searching for the match in the lobby browser. I'm not sure whether that's a feature or a glitch, but regardless it has been a handy tool to swap the class right after the match start in a situation like this. Unfortunately I didn't have friends in the lobby I've been in. Hence I couldn't change my class and we had to play with 2 gunners on a pyramideon against flamers. That didn't turn out well.
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I'm surprised that Muse hasn't developed a UI for mid-game switching - it could have certain restrictions such as one use per match and with a penalty timer similar to the AFK button. Everyone has just been using the rejoin via friends list trick for so long - no one has ever to my knowledge managed to abuse the system in-order to cheat - it should be in the game.
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<3 Wundsalz.
I'm trying to hold back and be very polite and understanding with all this but...this had been pointed out. Not just by me.
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What Wundsalz said
Sadly my impression of new patch was:
+ new lobbies look kinda nice
- yeah but nothing else works
- no, no, seriously it doesn't
- really
- Muse wtf
But I want to believe it's just a "few days after new patch" syndrome. On 1.3.7 game was basically unplayable for day or two so I hope that with our support it's a matter of week to set it straight. I really miss the good ol' server list.
I'm surprised that Muse hasn't developed a UI for mid-game switching - it could have certain restrictions such as one use per match and with a penalty timer similar to the AFK button. Everyone has just been using the rejoin via friends list trick for so long - no one has ever to my knowledge managed to abuse the system in-order to cheat - it should be in the game.
My suggested solution was to allow changes up to say 20-30 seconds in game so you can change when you picked wrong loadout without breaking the whole game. I strongly support this.
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People cried bloody murder when scramble was brought about, and shockingly it wasn't the end of days.
I highly doubt your "Nothing else works assessment" is accurate, since you can, oh, still play the game...
Let's not dive off the deep end yet, shall we?
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A playable game is not necessarily a working or fun game.
Its not possible to change the class after a match started
Have you tried to re-join via the "Recent"-tab under the "Social"-tab?
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People cried bloody murder when scramble was brought about, and shockingly it wasn't the end of days.
I highly doubt your "Nothing else works assessment" is accurate, since you can, oh, still play the game...
Let's not dive off the deep end yet, shall we?
People cried out with good reason. Scramble was originally going to be mandatory outside of private games. The outcry changed that and made it so it was optional. While it is popular mode to play in and most pugs seem to play it, there are still lots who like that option of not having scramble on.
Don't knock the folks who care enough to speak up Imagine, if folks around here didn't who knows what this game would be like. I gotta hand it to Muse, they at least play their game. But they don't play it as much as most folks around here which is where the problem comes in. Bringing many of us into the dev app to provide feedback before patches was a fantastic move. Matchmaking would have probably been launched much sooner had many of the dev app folks not raised concerns. Granted not all the concerns were resolved, as Wundsalz has noted, but as time went Muse really cleaned things up. Had matchmaking launched early, it would have been a nightmare.
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People cried bloody murder when scramble was brought about, and shockingly it wasn't the end of days.
I highly doubt your "Nothing else works assessment" is accurate, since you can, oh, still play the game...
Let's not dive off the deep end yet, shall we?
That's true, but it wasn't as refined as it is now either. It was an absolute mess and poorly designed in every way, to the point that we had to have competitive matches in the future dev app. It was only with immediate, unanimous community uproar was the whole thing fixed so quickly.
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I'm just sayin', pretty much every patch people go absolutely bananas and then a week later people finally realize that oh, this is actually ok, if not good.
At some point the boy who cried wolf syndrome starts showing up.
And I'm not knocking people who care, Gilder, I'm knocking people who post about how this is it, the game is now dead, pack up your bags and leave (exaggeration on my part there a little bit of course) with every patch and change that's made.
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i can't help out skrubs anymore.
i used to join ships with lvl 2s that had no idea how to handle things yet and tanked them a bit to give them time to look at the cool graphics while i rebuilt the hull, i actually liked that.
i also have a teacher mode unlocked which makes me able to join noivce lobbies and sit in spectator slots and answer questions in-between matches. like in lobbies.
it was good that novice lobbies took some time.
it gave them time to ask questions, understand the UI, change the loadout for the 3rd time and this time press CUSTOMISATION COMPLETE.
now i don't even know if novice lobbies exist?! even if i press novice lobby in the matchmaking thing it seems to be an INCLUSIVE not EXCLUSIVE search.
at least give me a "match lobbies" and "novice lobbies" counter in a corner or something.
i'm wasting my time.
I LOVE THE GRAPHICAL UPDATES!!!!!
everything else makes me want to just restart an account because i'll never fucking get out of competitive gameplay with my lvls. and i just want to tank skrubs. i play competitive on the weekends.
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I tanked for a few "scrubs" last night. The match making system randomly put me in a lobby where the other team's levels were in the 20's and my team's levels were in the single digits. It must have thought my mere presence would even out the odds. I did not enjoy the experience since the captain did not listen to my loadout advice and we ended up in an hour tickle fight where the deciding factor was a side carronade on a goldfish. I would have ditched the game after the first 30 minutes but I did not want to add to my leave count.
There were less shut out wins last night, which I guess is a good thing. However I was forced to go full on training mode when I was in the mood to be a silent cog in a well run machine.
I still haven't seen the captain's loadout request. Either it bugged out or none of the captains I flew under had set the equipment requirements.
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i can't help out skrubs anymore.
i used to join ships with lvl 2s that had no idea how to handle things yet and tanked them a bit to give them time to look at the cool graphics while i rebuilt the hull, i actually liked that.
i also have a teacher mode unlocked which makes me able to join noivce lobbies and sit in spectator slots and answer questions in-between matches. like in lobbies.
it was good that novice lobbies took some time.
it gave them time to ask questions, understand the UI, change the loadout for the 3rd time and this time press CUSTOMISATION COMPLETE.
now i don't even know if novice lobbies exist?! even if i press novice lobby in the matchmaking thing it seems to be an INCLUSIVE not EXCLUSIVE search.
at least give me a "match lobbies" and "novice lobbies" counter in a corner or something.
i'm wasting my time.
I LOVE THE GRAPHICAL UPDATES!!!!!
everything else makes me want to just restart an account because i'll never fucking get out of competitive gameplay with my lvls. and i just want to tank skrubs. i play competitive on the weekends.
Novice still exists. First 40 matches are all Novice.
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oh i know it exists, but i don't know WHEN and if AT THIS SECOND. and i can't join them anymore as i used to.
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B'Elanna, I actually brought up that concern to Muse yesterday (that was the larger reason I wanted to be a CA as well). if there's not enough novices in the matchmaker to create a novice match, it will loosen the restriction for them to go into a novice match.
they're going to raise the novice cap, and that should mean more novices for MM to create a novice match for.
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I don't get why there are novice matches to begin with. Matchmaking should take care of matching new players with new players anyway.
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Novice matches are there to gently introduce players to the game with a limited set of weapons and reduce stomping and frustration.
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I'll grant you the loadout limitation part, but matchmaking should be able to handle the stomping part.
I just wonder why you've decided to stick to the novice matches, as this divides our already dried-out player pool for match making.
With matchmaking in place, the novice matches seem to be somewhat redundant if not obsolete to me.
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I don't get why there are novice matches to begin with. Matchmaking should take care of matching new players with new players anyway.
Except it doesn't. It mixes them together because obviously you achieve "balance" by dropping a level 45 gunner on a ship of novices...
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I don't get why there are novice matches to begin with. Matchmaking should take care of matching new players with new players anyway.
Except it doesn't. It mixes them together because obviously you achieve "balance" by dropping a level 45 gunner on a ship of novices...
I'm lvl 1 just like you guys - honest!
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hmmmmm.
yesterday I flew in a match that had a level 45 pilot and a level 1 pilot (that had only played a couple matches) together, and a couple of level 20-30 pilots on the other team.
and you know what? the match was balanced. it was actually a very long deathmatch - a close game. the matchmaker seemed to do its job.
...but I'm not sure the situation served the novice very well, and I was on the ship with the level 45 captain - I know he was frustrated. and while I'm not one to get frustrated easily at someone else learning something new, I understand when other people do. some people just want to sit down and play - and in a teamwork-based game, they don't want to carry the whole match with half the team falling behind. it did happen some with the old system too...but not like this. this isn't the only time that someone's vented their frustration to me with very similar circumstances within the last couple of days, not by a long shot.
so I'm hoping fixing the cap for novices will bring more novice matches and give them a bit of experience.
the other part about that too - as a CA, it's more effective to jump into a lobby full of novices and be able to support them all. they may not get the same kind of help scattered, especially if the rest of the playerbase is as frustrated as those that have vented to me.
:(
oh, one more point Wundsalz, I don't see novice matches dividing the player pool. well, it does, but it doesn't hinder anything. if there's enough novices for a novice match, then there's a lobby for them. they'll get placed into a lobby with other players either way; I don't see the difference if it's in an all-novice lobby or a lobby that's largely more experienced players, just as long as the lobbies are getting filled.
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Novice matchers have restricted loadouts to ease them into the game.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but your levels and matchmaking rating have nothing to do with each other.
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I'd say it's a stretch to say levels totally don't correlate at all in any way to your matchmaking rating. I'd warrant a guess that any given level 45 has a higher ranking than any given level 1.
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The real issue with Novice right now is there are so few players around, there will almost never be enough Novice players to fill a Novice lobby. This will be greatly alleviated when we start getting more players in during the next sale.
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Novice matches are redundant if we've got matchmaking now. If the system is designed properly, the novices will be shifted into matches with more novices anyways. So, it is pretty much pointless to keep the restriction going and hindering the playerbase. If they end up in advanced matches then oh well. That was happening before matchmaking anyways. Many times I'd be in a match with someone who had only played a couple of games.
Shaelyn that wasn't a balanced match, that was just a normal match. Sometimes that happens. I doubt it actually balanced the players and put them in appropriate ships based on skill. That would require a modifier setup or some definition of skill that Muse has implemented. Lot of extra work when you can just make it level based and shift people about based on that.
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yeah Imagine, the matchmaker doesn't look at levels, it looks at skill. while levels aren't really a good indication of skill, you take a pilot that's hit the max and you look at a player that has never played, and well, that's pretty easy to judge.
the matchmaker doesn't balance ships, it balances teams. and it looks like matchmaker doesn't try to fill the lobby with people around a sort of bracket of skill level at all (such as the novices in a match against each other) - rather, it just seems to grab a pool of people quickly and sort out skill level where it can. could be wrong, but that's my experience so far.
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yeah Imagine, the matchmaker doesn't look at levels, it looks at skill. while levels aren't really a good indication of skill, you take a pilot that's hit the max and you look at a player that has never played, and well, that's pretty easy to judge.
the matchmaker doesn't balance ships, it balances teams. and it looks like matchmaker doesn't try to fill the lobby with people around a sort of bracket of skill level at all (such as the novices in a match against each other) - rather, it just seems to grab a pool of people quickly and sort out skill level where it can. could be wrong, but that's my experience so far.
What I meant by that is a lvl 45 pilot queuing up as a lvl 1 engineer isn't seen by the system as a lvl 1 engineer, thus wouldn't (or, rather, shouldn't) be queueing them into a lvl 1 match, which seemed to be of some discussion here.
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Speaking of skill: How is a novice that wins every match against novies different from a high level that wins against high level pilots or even low level pilots? What if the novice plays on the high level ship against high level enemies and wins? Would he not, according to the system, have a similar amount of skill as the high level pilot or even more since he is a lower level and wins against high levels?
I don't want to doubt Muse's ability to come up with algorithm or use already existing algorithm, but I worry that the algorithm for Matchmaking is not able to differentiate between high level & high skill and novice and high skill.
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Speaking of skill: How is a novice that wins every match against novies different from a high level that wins against high level pilots or even low level pilots? What if the novice plays on the high level ship against high level enemies and wins? Would he not, according to the system, have a similar amount of skill as the high level pilot or even more since he is a lower level and wins against high levels?
I don't want to doubt Muse's ability to come up with algorithm or use already existing algorithm, but I worry that the algorithm for Matchmaking is not able to differentiate between high level & high skill and novice and high skill.
Because of maths: it does differentiate between skill level and wins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system
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Zomg, Muse didn't listen to really anything. First chance I had to really get into it while on this trip. Outside of custom games or events...there is no reason to play this game anymore. Good job Muse, you shot yourself in the foot...with a howitzer.
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hmmmmm.
yesterday I flew in a match that had a level 45 pilot and a level 1 pilot (that had only played a couple matches) together, and a couple of level 20-30 pilots on the other team.
and you know what? the match was balanced. it was actually a very long deathmatch - a close game. the matchmaker seemed to do its job.
...but I'm not sure the situation served the novice very well, and I was on the ship with the level 45 captain - I know he was frustrated. and while I'm not one to get frustrated easily at someone else learning something new, I understand when other people do. some people just want to sit down and play - and in a teamwork-based game, they don't want to carry the whole match with half the team falling behind. it did happen some with the old system too...but not like this. this isn't the only time that someone's vented their frustration to me with very similar circumstances within the last couple of days, not by a long shot.
This is problem matchmaking CAN resolve, but the current implementation doesn't. The current Match making implementation is too eager to drop players (and veterans in particular) into matches ASAP. I suggest to let vets wait for a couple of minutes to mix them into existing vet-matches rather than trying to balance horribly stacked lobbies with them.
I'd like to share a post I've made in the dev-app section a while back, as it's still valid for the live version we all play right now. In the current state of matchmaking I think muse addressed point 2 insufficiently. Currently we experience the scenario described in b). I don't like that.
In oder to create "good matches" the system needs to minimzie two things:
1.) The difference between the average player rating of the matched teams (this is to ensure the outcome of the match is as open as possible)
2.) The deviation of the player rating in the match from the average player rating (this is to ensure that noone has to carry "deadweight" aroung)
In order to do both jobs properly the system needs to rely on a sufficiently large enough pool of 'matching' players is 'available' at any time someone hits the ready button. I do believe our player base is large enough to match-make the vast majority of players fufilling both requirements rather well, which will likely increase the average match quality significantly.
However I doubt the system can cater the needs of veteran players properly. That's because the playerbase of veterans is rather low - especially outside of EU/US-prime-time. In order to deal with us via matchmaking you've got two options:
a) let us wait until a sufficiently large number of "fitting players" is available (which would probably mean that you'll have us wait until that one running vet-match is over while we watch a queue-timer) or
b) match us against average players with less useful partners. This is how other games often do it and it tends to yield "balanced" matches in which the "moster" tries to accumulate kills faster than the "feeder" dies to the enemy. That's rarely enjoyable, despite the fact that the outcome of the match is hard to predict.
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100% agree with Wundsalz. While it might be more "fair" to quickly throw some higher-skill players into a low-skill team against an average-skill team, it's not fun at all. I'm not a CA or teacher because I can be abrasive and low on patience, and I don't like to spend half a match yelling "SPANNER TO REBUILD! MALLET TO REPAIR! THINGS HAVE A COOLDOWN! REPAIR OTHER STUFF! AIM AT THE HULL!!!" to someone who has played 2 matches. I would much rather wait longer to matched up with an entire lobby of players with a lower deviation of level/skill/however it's measured.
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Bragging rights? I kind of want every achievement to also be a badge..
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Once a game's ended, people should be returned to queue if they wish to continue playing, either solo or with the friends they initially queued with. This way lobby quality will improve over time, as people will either end up in the same lobby (assuming there's no better one) or in one they're better fit for. If there's a lvl45 pilot in queue and 3 lvl 5 pilots, they shouldn't be placed in the same lobby at all. At the very least, ask the minority to switch to another class that has somewhat of a lesser impact in the outcome of the game and the enjoyment factor for the rest of the players (and himself).
Also scramble makes no sense anymore. Game 1, you're lvl 40 with a lvl 1 ally vs lvl 38 and lvl 5 ally. Game 2, lvl 40 is with the lvl 38 versus the lvl 1 and 5. (???)
Instead of scrambling ships and further reducing a lobby's quality just send everyone back to queue. If they are so eager to rematch or whatever there's always custom games.
ps; Wunds is ofc right. I'm horrified of queuing alone (even more than I was of playing alone in the past), as the game tends to throw me into a lvl 5 ship versus a full 2 ship stack in a dumb attempt to balance things. If game's superempty at a moment and there's no people playing, keep it as is. Otherwise, matchmaking should take a look at currently running lobbies and the players within them, and have freshly queued people wait accordingly. Once these running games are over, and the participants are thrown back into the queue, there will be far better potential balancing of the next few games, resulting in more happy players.
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Hey Guys,
Just got out of a hour long call about this subject so I want to share some behind the curtain info, thoughts, and reasoning. It's also very important to note that balance isn't something obvious (in most circumstances) especially since levels and Glicko2 score are very very different. There are many level 20s that share the same glicko2 score with 40s and vice versa. Even beyond this I do agree that matchmaking does not prioritize balance as the main focus.
Any match system is built of three pillars
Time
Flexibility
Balance
Time is obvious, the amount of time you force a player to wait to find a match. Flexibility is things like friend join and crew form, basically anything that lets players have control in any form. Balance is well.. balance.
@Mezhu you're definitely right that the rematch button does sacrifice the number of people in queue and contributes to less balanced matches, but so do many elements of the system.
Matchmaking has gone through a lot of changes through it's development through it's time and based off player outcry there were a lot of concessions that improved the flexibility of the system, but decreased the time or more often the balance.
Features that hurt balance
Rematch
Crew Form
Friend Join
Ship/slot swapping
Spectator swapping
Lobby leaving without penalty
Custom matches
Server Location
Speed of matchmaker
If there are any things here that you don't think are vital definitely let me know.
The more of these we can remove the better we can balance the game. If none of these existed we could promise quick and perfectly balanced matches all the time with very few edge cases, but we'd sacrifice all flexibility. We love the idea of playing with friends, but statistically matches started with crew form are less balanced than matches started solely from single queue players. In this case though we view being able to play with friends and have that flexibility, as greater than balance.
We will of course be fine-tuning and tweaking the system to maximize every area we can and we if we ever have a clever or improved idea we'll put it in, but in the meantime I thought you guys would like to know how we tackled this problem and the decisions we made.
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Imo, the ability to spectator/ship/slot jump or friend join should be removed to begin with. These just contribute to a poorer lobby balance and are easy to abuse. There's crew formation for people who wish to play together.
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The problem is, people will raise hell if join friend is removed. I propose an alternate idea. Have the matchmaker try to match crews that form together with eachother more often than not. This way, a weighted team is fighting a weighted team, rather than having a 3v3 match with 3 level 30-40s vs 3 crews that were randomly dropped in there, most of whom are below 15. While no indication of skill, that does show a lack of experience. Especially for players in the lower single digits.
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Rematch - Shouldn't be needed. If I really need this we can make a custom game.
Crew Form - Necessary to play with friends. This one is good.
Friend Join - Just wait for your friend to finish their match. You should really only be able to join a friend if they are in a lobby before the match has started and there is an empty slot, not join mid-match.
Ship/slot swapping - Not necessary. If I want to be on someone's team/ship I will crew form with them.
Spectator swapping - Not sure what you mean by this... The ability to become a spectator? I'm not sure I'm really a fan of this. I imagine spectator in a different role...
Lobby leaving without penalty - There should be a penalty, but only if rematch is not a thing. I can explain that if need be.
Custom matches - Custom matches should be fine if you can open them to the public freely and it gives you a warning if the current population won't support your custom lobby (100 players are online and 50 make custom matches).
Server Location - Necessary - I'll come back to this.
Speed of matchmaker - Let's come back to this too.
My catch on this is the match options you can set when you ask matchmaker to put you in a game.
If I take the time to ask for a specific set of circumstances for my match, I should never be put in a match that does not meet those circumstances no matter how long it takes.
I view entering the matchmaking queue as a contract. I am telling the matchmaker "Here is what I want. Find this for me, no matter how long it takes, and place me in a semi-balanced match. If you do this, I will trust you and play the entire match and will not leave the lobby."
If I want to join with a crew, I am giving my own restrictions. If I want to play in a nearby server for better ping, I am giving my own restrictions. If I want to play pilot, 2v2, no CP, then I am giving my own restrictions. I am happy to wait, but if I wait only to be placed in a 3v3 CP as a copilot, then I will be upset and feel justified in leaving.
Spectator slot should be a waiting queue for people who want to play with a specific person but that person is in a match already. I can go watch them play and spend my time viewing until they finish.
A lobby should open and close for each matchmade match so a player gets placed, plays a game, and gets moved back out into the main menu to find another match. From there they can play with the same people, or go alone. The current system for that works well, but the option to rematch creates half-empty lobbies that are best matched by placing the same people back in.
Currently I don't trust the matchmaker to put me in a game I want. I will watch the details and if it mentions that it is loosening restrictions, I have to leave the queue and rejoin to make sure I actually get what I want. Not good.
I guess I'm imagining the Awesomenauts matchmaker except with the ability to find and spectate friends that are mid-match, and with the ability to specify game types and character classes etc.
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Features that hurt balance
Rematch
Crew Form
Friend Join
Ship/slot swapping
Spectator swapping
Lobby leaving without penalty
Custom matches
Server Location
Speed of matchmaker
If there are any things here that you don't think are vital definitely let me know.
Rematch - I don't need this
Crew Form - I want this. Let me play with friends!
Friend Join - crew form should be sufficient
Ship/slot swapping - no, this blatantly contradicts the goal of matchmaking. Get rid of obsolete features please! I'd rather like to have one working system than 2 which inhibit each other --edit-- Intra-team swaps should be fine though
Spectator swapping - what's spectator swapping?
Lobby leaving without penalty - If matchmaking would be able to reliably place me into balanced matches with a low skill deviation, I wouldn't mind a penalty for leaving a lobby. However as long as you place me into ships as a second gunner and/or try balance a rookies vs. mediocre players matches with me, I'd prefer to have the option to say no to your systems silly suggestions.
Custom matches - those are necessary for scrims, cws and other events. They should not be integrated into the match making system.
Server Location - I only want to play on US and EU servers.
Speed of matchmaker - I don't mind waiting a minute or two... or 5-10 if that ensures I'll be fielded with good players against good players.
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Spectator swapping refers to joining a game as spectator, picking a side on your own and joining it as a player. In current implementation, a mm lobby will also allow a player to change sides by first swapping into the spectator slot and then rejoining any side he wishes, but that's just a bug I assume.
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If that's so I'd like the spectator to be able to join a team if he wishes to, but only if it doesn't ruin the matches balance (glick-rating check).
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I'd actually prefer more flexibility over the balance. the restrictions add frustration and stress, and in the end make the experience as a whole less fun. fun is what I'm trying to achieve, and while balanced matches are a lot of fun, I don't go into this game expecting a perfectly balanced match every single game. and hell, I've had a match where the crew and I sang Still Alive as we got stomped. it was hilarious and awesome, would repeat. it's not the balance that makes the game fun, it's the people that I crew with. I want to be able to crew with the people that I have fun with whenever I want, and easily.
I would still rather see match list go in alongside matchmaking - use the matchmaker to fill in the crevices and balance where it can, and to bring the people that don't want to hunt for a match an easy way into a match, but let those of us that want to search through for something more specific do so. no, it won't be balanced, but it's not balanced now, either. I am willing to concede the match list completely with good reason (balance would be a good enough reason, but again, it's not balanced now, so I don't see any reason for the match list to not exist right now), but I absolutely do not want to lose the ability to quickly and easily hop into a friend's match, especially not for the sake of balance. the current system is still much too restrictive.
Mezhu, swapping slots through spectate was a feature the player base that tested the game fought for, since they removed the swap slot function otherwise and still want to restrict. when I first tested, they didn't allow people to move from spectate at all - but a lot of people move to spectate for a match while they're eating or answering a phone call, or they'll start in spectate and want to jump in once a slot opens up with their friends. additionally, sometimes people try to join their group of friends and wind up on the wrong team.
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I 100% agree with everything Shaelyn articulated way better than I could.
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I 100% agree with everything Shaelyn articulated way better than I could.
Basically this. +1
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I 100% agree with everything Shaelyn articulated way better than I could.
(http://media2.giphy.com/media/dOJt6XZlQw8qQ/giphy.gif)
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Also agree with shaelyn. the only thing I think could go is rematch, everything else is a must for me.
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I'd actually prefer more flexibility over the balance. the restrictions add frustration and stress, and in the end make the experience as a whole less fun. fun is what I'm trying to achieve, and while balanced matches are a lot of fun, I don't go into this game expecting a perfectly balanced match every single game. and hell, I've had a match where the crew and I sang Still Alive as we got stomped. it was hilarious and awesome, would repeat. it's not the balance that makes the game fun, it's the people that I crew with. I want to be able to crew with the people that I have fun with whenever I want, and easily.
I would still rather see match list go in alongside matchmaking - use the matchmaker to fill in the crevices and balance where it can, and to bring the people that don't want to hunt for a match an easy way into a match, but let those of us that want to search through for something more specific do so. no, it won't be balanced, but it's not balanced now, either. I am willing to concede the match list completely with good reason (balance would be a good enough reason, but again, it's not balanced now, so I don't see any reason for the match list to not exist right now), but I absolutely do not want to lose the ability to quickly and easily hop into a friend's match, especially not for the sake of balance. the current system is still much too restrictive.
Mezhu, swapping slots through spectate was a feature the player base that tested the game fought for, since they removed the swap slot function otherwise and still want to restrict. when I first tested, they didn't allow people to move from spectate at all - but a lot of people move to spectate for a match while they're eating or answering a phone call, or they'll start in spectate and want to jump in once a slot opens up with their friends. additionally, sometimes people try to join their group of friends and wind up on the wrong team.
You, my good sir, have earned a place on my "I must crew with you" list. Singing Still Alive is hilarious XD
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I am going to preface this by saying that I am not normally one to use forums and complain about things. However, I love GOI and it's small, tight-knit community and I want to contribute to the progress of this game and let my voice be heard because I think that the MatchMaking system in it's current form is causing a frustrating game-play experience for many others besides myself.
This patch was full of good improvements but I feel they are all overshadowed by the MatchMaking system. I pretty much agree with Shaelyn in that I value flexibility much greater than balance.
GOI is a game that is all about teamwork and cooperation. Communication is key to success. I only play when I have at least one friend to play with as I can effectively communicate with friends and it makes everyone's experience more pleasant if at least half of the ship is highly functioning. Being able to, at the very least form a crew is an absolute necessity, as is the ability to join friends' matches, though I really, really miss the ability to be able to view all the lobbies. This might diminish the balance a little bit, but I feel that it helps more than it hurts.
Ship/Slot swapping is another feature that I am sad to see go. This was a tool that gave us the power to at least somewhat adjust lobbies without having to reform them. Sometimes you want to tweak the teams a little bit and then rematch. I understand that the reason given for removing this feature was to achieve balance and prevent stacked teams. However, it has been my experience that this tool is almost always used in the reverse, in that people use it to un-stack the teams because everyone wants games that are more fun to play, and one-sided matches aren't very much fun for either side.
Custom matches are essential to the community. How else can you create a lobby named "Mobula Madness" and get two more mobula pilots to join up? Forcing MM as the only option prevents people from being able to do silly things and have fun with it. Please give us the option to at least opt-out of MM. People still need to be able to view these matches so that I can get the other two mobula pilots needed to start the match. This doesn't work if it's restricted to people who have me on their friends list.
The match timer has been addressed in another topic and I want to state that I feel it should be removed entirely, or at least don't start it until half the lobby has readied up. Forcing a match to begin with an ill-prepared crew does not make for a fun match. Maybe let the lobby vote to disable the timer?
There are many times during the late-night hours for me that I check out GOI and there are less than 50 people playing. That used to mean that I could choose between about three lobbies if you combine running and waiting lobbies. I could spectate a running game that is almost over and grab a spot when someone quits after the match, usually at least one person has to go. Now with the new MM system there are still probably only about three lobbies going, but now I can't see them and I have to put my faith in MM to do it for me. I have spent over 20 minutes waiting in MM purgatory before giving up and trying again only to spend even more time before I decide to just go play something else. With the old lobby system I would be waiting in a lobby with two or three other people and we could at least converse with one another while we waited for another boat or two. I might even make a new friend while I wait. Now I am stuck looking at an endless loop of tool-tips which I could probably recite to you by now.
I could go on but I feel like I have perhaps, already been too long-winded. Suffice it to say I am not at all pleased with the new MM system and I sincerely hope that Muse will listen to it's community and return previous functionality that was stripped away from us. I just want to smack an engine with a mallet without the frustration of MM diminishing my experience. I don't feel like there was anything wrong with the previous lobby system that is enhanced by MM.
See you all in the skies!
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Everyone finds joy in different aspects of the game, there's no arguing that. You think instajoining on friends, finding a game quickly, spectator jumping and singing while getting stomped is what makes the game fun. I think it's challenging, well balanced games that do so. Nothing wrong with either. You feel the current system is too restrictive, I feel it's not restrictive enough. Unfortunately, the game can't keep us all satisfied. The problem is, muse are trying to.
As it is right now, the game's standing with one foot on a very compromised matchmaking system, and with the other one on the old lobby system, in an attempt to make everyone happy (but disappointing everyone instead). What I'm wondering is, what is the current matchmaking system offering? It's been suggested over and over again for a long time now in, an attempt to fix long-standing problems within the game and its playerbase. Yet lobby quality is still crap, lobby balance hasn't improved in the slightest, stacking is still unresolved (there always are 5 high-skill stacks split among 4 games, stomping them instead of being put against each other).
If you're not dedicated enough to a matchmaking system, one that adresses these issues and attempts to improve the game in that regard, why the fuck do we have a matchmaking in the first place? Might as well return to the casual, fun for some, sing-while-getting stomped lobby system.
ps; I know this is the internet, where everyone complains and knows everything, but you have to admit that from a design perspective current mm implementation neither fixes nor improves much (save maybe for the lobby wait time), as it's so easy to bypass. This isn't meant to be a rant but rather constructive criticism, and I apologize if it feels like one.
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In order to make match-making work, the match making system needs to be in charge of matching players for matches.
Currently there are a lot of elements which completely undermine match-making. This corrodes the system to a degree that it's not able to fulfill its purpose - personally I don't see a major difference between the current match-making and the quick-play button we've had a while back.
If we want to make matchmaking work, the system needs to be restrictive - just take a look around what other games with matchmaking do! Many mobas have got a way larger player base and only need to match 10 players which are sort of on par, rather than 16 which are needed for GoIO. Still they restrict the size or pre-made parties and regard them as THE major problem which prevents balanced matches (see Smite matchmaking (http://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/1m6zfi/how_smite_matchmaking_works/)).
I doubt a proper matchmaking is possible unless the players "flexibility" is restricted. That being said I'm not comfortable with relying on the matchmaking system entirely until some infancy problems are resolved - multiple gunner matching, and the insane skill deviation (lvl<10+lvl45 captain vs. 2 lvl 30ish captains) in particular.
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Too many restrictions might cause the balance to be off. I have been in a few lobbies were experienced players realize the match is stacked but can't attempt to balance it because they can't swap ships with the other team.
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Relying on players' good will in balancing the games is more of a problem than a solution
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just take a look around what other games with matchmaking do! Many mobas have got a way larger player base and only need to match 10 players which are sort of on par, rather than 16 which are needed for GoIO.
I believe here lies the crux of the problem. GOI just does not have a large enough playerbase to make a matchmaking system work effectively. In order for MM to really work you need a large pool to draw from.
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Mez one of the big reasons Muse pushed MM on us is because they wanted to do away with the lobby list for performance reasons. When people would pull up the match list, it would require time and resources to poll the servers. MM gets around that.
Honestly, I think the other reasons were secondary but time will tell. They wanted that performance boost and were willing to risk enraging the community to do it. Will it pay off in the end? Dunno.
Other games run MM systems that aren't as aggravating. Awesomenauts comes to mind. However, that is a totally different game. Queuing up solo or in a group is completely fine. You don't need a lobby or forethought.
GOIO is more liken to say, original Ghost Recon or Rainbow 6. In those you spent time in a mission setup making sure your team as prepped to handle the mission. Heck original Rainbow 6 spent ages in prep before you ever got into a mission. What Muse seems trying to do is take a game that is designed for preparation and turning it into CoD, without a full effort being made to make it CoD. If you are removing the mind from GOIO then you gotta fundamentally change the entire game to match to the point an 8yr old with attention problems can pick it up and think he's OP. So, remove classes, just make everyone the same, add killstreaks and kill cams, DLC everything, and then rake in the dough from the mindless. Imagine those old FPS games with MM added. Zomg it would be a nightmare because 1 hit = 1 kill in those. Without planning or forethought you die. Rambo players were the ones who got kicked from servers.
EA did this with Battlefield after Bad Company 1 and it royally pissed off people like me who did not want a dumbed down game. So they back pedaled and shifted more of the classic gameplay to hardcore mode.
If Muse is part trying to attract larger audience and increase retention among new players by catering to twitch players, then the only hope we have is they patch in an actual veteran mode where many of the issues are resolved. We can play a more flexible game while they play restrictionfest.
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You, my good sir, have earned a place on my "I must crew with you" list. Singing Still Alive is hilarious XD
Miss, actually, and I look forward to it.
Everyone finds joy in different aspects of the game, there's no arguing that.
no, there isn't any arguing that. frankly, it looks to me like the player base is split down the middle in their opinions, and neither one is wrong. ...and no, the new matchmaking system is really not making anyone happy - and I'm pretty sure Muse is aware of that.
Frankly, at first I thought matchmaker should be largely to make quick play more prominent for those who don't want to search. when I actually got my hands on it in the dev app, I was pretty much shocked and at the time, suspected I'd have to drop the game. this game has a great community, and with all the restrictions to balance the matches, it pulls the community aspect out of the game. when Howard told me it was to prevent stomping, I loosened up on my stance quite a bit...but yeah, it's not working, and I fear the kind of sacrifices that'll have to be made for it to work even decently, let alone well.
the singing match was just an example... here's perhaps something easier to relate to: I work really well under captains that give me a lot of direction. I have several pilots on my friend's list that I fly with regularly because they divvy up roles between the crew well or keep in constant communication about what they need done when. those are typically the matches I thrive in. so yeah, I still want to be able to crew with the people that, when I'm flying with them, we got some kind of good chemistry or flow or direction, whatever you want to call it, and I (if not the rest of the crew too) kick more butt as a result. there's a lot of different situations in the game that make it rewarding or fun, and I have greater potential to have the rewarding or fun experience with flexibility than with balance.
argh. the way to appease both is probably to have two separate systems that don't really interact with each other (a match list that doesn't show matchmaking lobbies, and matchmaking doesn't fill in to the match list unless the person using matchmaking ticks a checkbox that says they don't care about balance and the matchmaking lobbies are all full), but our player base is wayyyyyyyyyy too small for that one. I dunno though, maybe that's a start of an idea of something that can be done (and a nightmare to program, probably). if matchmaker kept up a match or two that could only be filled by matchmaker, not crew form or anything else, and those using the matchmaker could select that as their preferred match option, just like they can select 2v2 or Crazy King, that could be a thing. or if the all the lobbies that matchmaker makes are restrictive, and only the custom matches aren't - and they stay not restricted when opened to matchmaker - again with the preference thing to include custom matches in match maker's search.
anyway. I'm trying to pull ideas out to make both sides happy and it's probably not going to work, but I'm trying, anyway.
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I think part of the problem with Matchmaking is just how most of us are used something completely different from the game.
We were hoping from lobby to lobby to find a ship we like to play on, a crew to pilot for, a map to enjoy, to find a balanced match. We were sitting in lobbies, swapping around, making custom lobbies with silly names, had all the time in the world inside the lobbies, more often than not even too much time.
We joined on friends, left lobbies and running matches, joined running matches and spectated, just because.
MM ereases all our previous experiences and wants to force us to enjoy the new restrictive version on the same or even higher level, which is just not possible, at least for now. If flexibility stays, matchmaking will not work, so something has to change.
As I see it, the options are:
Revert back to the lobby list system. Probably not going to happen if Muse wants to keep their performance.
Allow players to not do anything in lobbies, but stay on their own team, which will make spectating only possible through joining as an actual spectater. Currently one is not able to swap around like one wants and can't just switch to the enemy teams crew/captain slot unless they switch to spectator first. (I am actually not 100% sure, because I didn't bother figuring out when you can switch to another slot and when not). Joining on friends here should not be possible when they are in a lobby, since it could change the balance. Joining friends when they are in a queue could be a thing though.
Allow players to do everything they could do before once they are in a lobby. As this will involve swapping of all kinds it is as problematic as the old lobby system as it has the potential to destroy the balance MM has created, if any balance was created at all. Although if MM manages to put similar skilled players into one lobby, how much balance can be destroyed, how bad would it really be to allow players to swap with anybody they want in the same lobby? (Excluding friends joining the lobby on their own free wil.l)
Doing 30% this and 57% that doesn't work out.
Features that hurt balance
...
Lobby leaving without penalty
I doubt that leaving lobby with a penalty will improve balance.
And I too am a victim of joining as a second gunner thanks to matchmaking, it even said gunners are a needed class!
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@Shaelyn,Greenbreeze
None of the restrictions proposed above actually disallow you to play with your friends. Instead of friend joining lobbies or mid-match, one of you would simply have to wait a bit for the other to finish and then queue up together. Voila, now you're both playing together AND promoting healthy game balance and quality. I don't have any idea as to why everyone considers this such a huge compromise that would apparently destroy the so-called community aspect of the game and whatnot.
As for the 'but I only want to play 4 harpoon mobulas and mm wont let me!' argument, the answer is custom games. Get your friends who enjoy that kind of thing, host a custom game, have fun the way you want to have fun. You want it to be public because you also enjoy meeting strangers while doing your thing? Amazing, utilize the global chat and advertise your custom lobby.
If these were serious reasons for a self-respecting game not to have matchmaking or to impelement is so badly crippled, Dota 2 wouldn't have matchmaking because some people want to play 'all mid rikimaru-only' games, and some others can't stand the thought of their friends being in a game which they can't join right away. These examples are outside the norm and not what the average game is supposed to look like or actually looks like. To be absolutely honest I feel like the game's potential's been held back because of our (the community's) very very weird expectations.
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@Shaelyn,Greenbreeze
None of the restrictions proposed above actually disallow you to play with your friends. Instead of friend joining lobbies or mid-match, one of you would simply have to wait a bit for the other to finish and then queue up together. Voila, now you're both playing together AND promoting healthy game balance and quality. I don't have any idea as to why everyone considers this such a huge compromise that would apparently destroy the so-called community aspect of the game and whatnot.
yeah, what you're suggesting is doable. but if people were complaining about having to wait before with "lobbies of Icarus" ...ugh. that's just frustrating. let me explain this one:
on the old system, on several occasions, I'd start in a lobby alone. and then one of my clanmates finds me and hops in. and then another. and another. slowly but surely, half the lobby fills with Clan Clan - any takers? <3 and by the time it gets to that point, of course, a custom match is going to be the better option...but what's the point of going through the trouble of making a custom match and waiting for it to fill when another clannie is going to try to hop in halfway through the next match, and as a group, we have to do the whole thing yet again? and how many times are we going to have to crew form in order to keep playing with each other as a group?
for how frustrating that situation would get, for how much time would be spent waiting while not even in a lobby...ugh.
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@Shaelyn,Greenbreeze
None of the restrictions proposed above actually disallow you to play with your friends. Instead of friend joining lobbies or mid-match, one of you would simply have to wait a bit for the other to finish and then queue up together. Voila, now you're both playing together AND promoting healthy game balance and quality. I don't have any idea as to why everyone considers this such a huge compromise that would apparently destroy the so-called community aspect of the game and whatnot.
As for the 'but I only want to play 4 harpoon mobulas and mm wont let me!' argument, the answer is custom games. Get your friends who enjoy that kind of thing, host a custom game, have fun the way you want to have fun. You want it to be public because you also enjoy meeting strangers while doing your thing? Amazing, utilize the global chat and advertise your custom lobby.
If these were serious reasons for a self-respecting game not to have matchmaking or to impelement is so badly crippled, Dota 2 wouldn't have matchmaking because some people want to play 'all mid rikimaru-only' games, and some others can't stand the thought of their friends being in a game which they can't join right away. These examples are outside the norm and not what the average game is supposed to look like or actually looks like. To be absolutely honest I feel like the game's potential's been held back because of our (the community's) very very weird expectations.
No, the restrictions do not make it impossible to play the game with my friends but they do not make it easy either. I find the whole experience to be rather frustrating. I am used to having a certain level of limited control and trying to figure out a way to do something that was easy to do before only to find that now it cannot be done is quite frustrating. It seems that lobby waiting time has been replaced with MM limbo waiting time. Starting a match with the old system resulted in it filling up with a mixture of people from your friends list and random people you never met before eventually if you were patient. Now you can't expect a Custom Game to ever fill. Custom matches are only good if you have enough people around that you know and can get them all to fill a lobby with you, which is pretty rare for me.
I agree that custom matches is where you should create a 4 harpoon mobula lobby, however I disagree that you can expect to fill that lobby through global advertisement. With the old system every person who viewed the lobby list would see my game listed in there and I might get enough takers. If I have to advertise in global chat that greatly reduces the number of people who will see it from the get-go. Not everyone bothers to look at global chat, but almost everyone who wants to play a game will see a game I have listed in the lobby list. This also allows me to do something else while I wait for the lobby to fill if I want, instead of spamming global in an attempt to fill the last boat.
I don't think it's quite fair to compare Dota 2 matchmaking to GOI matchmaking. A quick google search tells me that as of 2012 the user base was over 2.5 million with around 350k simultaneous users. I would say that is a substantially larger pool to draw from for a matchmaking system and it's no wonder that they can better refine the behavior of their matchmaker.
I would wager that if GOI had even half that number we would all love the new MM. What it all boils down to is that the size of the playerbase in GOI cannot really support a MM. It might work okay during the times of day with more activity, but to have MM during the times when there are only 50 people playing the game seems pretty silly to me.
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A proposal.
2 Systems. Matchmaking and Custom Games (MM and CG).
In Matchmaking, you can queue up alone or with friends to be placed in a new somewhat balanced match. You are stuck where you get placed. You can leave, but it penalizes you (experience or lockout from MM or something). You play the match. Afterwards, it throws you back in the main menu every time.
From there you can reform your crew (plus or minus any new friends) and rejoin the queue for a new match. You can specify specific criteria like game type and class, and if you do you will eventually get them, though it will take longer.
If someone wants to join you, there are spectator slots where they can join and watch you play until the match ends. Then they can join your crew form for the next game.
It is a simple way for a person to go online and play a single game with little to no hassle of having to look through a list of lobbies and hope something interests them. Maybe the MM can have the tab flash so you can tab out and browse the internet until you get placed in a match.
In CG you can create a custom game with all of your own settings. You can invite friends. Friends can join on you. You can advertise in global chat and people can join on you from there. In all aspects, it is an old style lobby from the lobby list, you just don't have a lobby list to pick from. People have to actively join on you.
The MM will never place people in your match. This is your custom game. You are responsible for filling it if you think you really need a lobby just for yourself or your idea.
After your match ends, you go back to your lobby just like you used to, to play another round of your custom game. You still won't be part of the MM system, and you won't be. Matchmaker is not responsible for taking care of your custom lobby.
In essence, matchmaking is for when you just want to play the game. You can socialize. You can try to play with friends when you can. You can have fun. But you are joining up because you explicitly want to play the game, and you can expect matches to start in a timely manner.
Custom games would be for when you have some idea that you think would be fun, or you want to have a match between 2 teams (competitive), or you want to do something goofy or want to try something. Custom games will have no restrictions other than you have to fill them yourselves.
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What redria said.
Remove friends' MM lobbies from custom lobby list, remove linking custom lobbies to MM, remove taking exp or achieving stuff in custom lobbies. Make all custom lobbies visible to everyone. Then custom lobbies are turned into what you want them to be. Places for casual fun that anyone can join and do not affect the rest of the playerbase.
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If it is going to be split into two systems or a hybrid system I still feel you will need to have a match list of all the custom games running and waiting. If you split it so that only custom games are advertised to preserve the balance that MM attempts to achieve that would probably be sufficient. The lack of a feature to view lobbies is one of my main complaints about the new system. I don't want to add every person in the game to my friends list to retain functionality I had before. I have seen other games where MM is the default method for finding a match but they still give you the ability to view all the matches and you can join one manually if you desire(Hawken comes to mind). This doesn't seem to break anything in those games, but GOI is unique with it's small community and heavy slant towards teamwork. There aren't really a whole lot of equivalent games to compare it to.
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hang on, hang on. I think we're all suggesting the same thing with a few tweaks, am I right? split custom matches from matchmaker ones, and games made from the matchmaker only get filled by the matchmaker and maintain balance. after that, it's just a matter of custom matches and what those that would use it want out of it. am I right? just as long as the balanced matches the matchmaker makes don't get touched.
so if we want, since it wouldn't hinder matchmaking, there could be a match list for just custom games. there could be slot swapping and friend join and everything we want. and possibly, matchmaker could have a selection on it to fit a person to custom games as well as balanced games (priority: speed, and give a chance for custom games to be filled), or balanced games only. but none of that would touch the matches that the matchmaker balances. matches created by the matchmaker can have all the restrictions.
I still question whether we're big enough to split the player base like this. but it's something Muse can try, if they want to?
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Entering custom games through matchmaker kills the point of custom games. Custom games should be custom games, ones for the people that cant live without their 4 harpoon mobula and their friend join oh-so-important functions, apart from the rest of the matching system.
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Even with that CG system there should be a option in MM to fill custom games. You can't fill everything from advertisements because people come and go all the time. You need steady players able to replace ragers. In LFG queues in SWTOR there is an option you have to select to join Ops in progress. It isn't on by default. You just click a box and boom, you are now queued for other groups.
I propose a similar system. Add a button on the MM screen for CGs. People who make CGs can also have a button to accept MM players. So both sides get the choice.
Now lets add another layer to help this. In SWTOR's queue system, you can see the group make up and who is in it before you accept to join. For GOIO CG we do the same. MM finds the CG and the title of the CG game is displayed in a popup box with two buttons, "join match" "return to queue." That way if you don't want to join Farticus's Poontacular match, you don't have to. You just return to queue and look for the next.
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Features that hurt balance
Rematch
Crew Form
Friend Join
Ship/slot swapping
Spectator swapping
Lobby leaving without penalty
Custom matches
Server Location
Speed of matchmaker
btw, the WANTED minigame is missing here, since if joining on people is against balance and will be removed then the WANTED minigame can't be executed or can it?
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fuck it. just add everyone to your watch-list, and have all the costume matches.
then let's just request a separate (consensual) friends-list and have them be a different colour.
that's the only way to cheat yourself match lists back.
just give us a separate friend-list and i will get off your back. promise.
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AND STOP MAKING THE BOTTOM LOOK LIKE FACEBOOK
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Entering custom games through matchmaker kills the point of custom games. Custom games should be custom games, ones for the people that cant live without their 4 harpoon mobula and their friend join oh-so-important functions, apart from the rest of the matching system.
...if you have a custom game and need to fill it, it absolutely does not kill the point of custom games. if you don't want your custom game open to the matchmaker, don't open it to it. if you do, then open it, and the person using the matchmaker to find a match also has the option of searching within custom games as well, or filtering them out. advertising for a match in global is not easy and does not give good results, and it doesn't hurt any of the balanced matches to do this, so why not, if other people want it?
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Hey everyone,
Let me chime in real quick. In the case of match balance, if we are to ensure balance, and that's the number one overriding and over arching goal, then we will need to remove everything that goes counter to and hinders the match maker's ability to balance a match. These items are: friend joins, crew form, allowing people to leave pre game lobbies without penalty, having a pre game lobby, slot swaps, ship swaps, wait time, scrambling, rematches, display of cosmetic levels. I'm new to this thread, and if this has been mentioned before, I apologize for repeating it. If we slightly modify any of these elements, they can help, but if you guys want balance to be perfect for every single match, and expects the match makers to attempt to achieve, then what we'll need to do is to start taking a lot of the social features away.
I think the suggestions by Shaelyn and Gilder are really good ones, and we can definitely do that, and they could help. However, in looking at the data that we collected over the last week, if we want to optimize balance, the first thing we probably should do is to not allow people to leave pre-match lobbies. Right now, that is by the looks of it, the #1 offender of imbalanced matches (as we also implemented a delay to not put people who left back into the same match right away). The reason why we allowed people to leave was because of consideration for trolling. But this is leading to imbalances. The matches that the match maker actually balanced were at times disrupted or upset by people freely bailing out on matches. If you guys want, we could implement a real penalty for leaving pre-match lobbies, and that will help match balance. Another thing that we've seen from data to cause balance to be affected was crew forming by high(est) level players. This coupled with leaving was the number one reason for match imbalances. If you guys are willing to forego crew form into match maker for the sake of balance, we could allow crew form to be only for custom games. But this is going to be a hit for the social aspects of the game.
The bottomline is, we had to made concessions to make the match system flexible for you guys to foster, expand on, or retain the social, community, and custom features. These unfortunately impact the match maker's ability to balance matches individually and in totality.
We can't take complaints about lacking social features and lacking perfect balance at the same time, and be expected to achieve both. We are trying, and will continue to try. But being totally honest, to have all the social features you guys want, and to to achieve perfect balance for every match is impossible, as these are opposing forces tugging at each other.
Also, with the level system, please keep in mind that they are cosmetic by in large. Perceived imbalance arose when people look at crewed formed high levels and decided that the match was imbalanced at first glance. So there is also a perception difference between what a person may perceived as balanced or imbalanced, versus what in reality may or may not be balanced. This is why we removed the display of levels in the prematch lobby, as your levels by in large only tells you how much you've played, but not how well you've played. The underlying system of the match maker factors in not only how well you've played, but also how well the team as a whole should be playing.
Personally, I don't want to take away social features if I can help it, as they are what makes our system different and potentially greater and more powerful. So the 2 things we would like to try are to cap rematches, so that the match maker queue will have more pop in queue over the long run. The second thing we will try is handsomely reward (and perhaps achievement track) people for staying in lobbies generated by match maker and fight (even as underdogs). This reward could have impact on leveling as well (as in giving more leveling bonuses). In adherence to our spirit of positively reinforce the community wherever possible, I would rather do this than to punish leaving.
Another point is, B'Elanna is right. The more friends you add, the more the friend match list becomes the old match list. The way of tech is headed towards friend curation and filtering, and so are we. I think it's the right way to go.
On the point about not allowing custom game to pull from match maker, yeah we can do that. We had it designed like that initially, and changed it because we took feedback from player testers that they would like help filling matches. If the vet custom game creates and fine with recruiting players not from match maker, we could easily revert back to not allowing custom games to pull from match maker. But I don't want to keep changing back and forth though, so if this is the majority will, we can do that.
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The last thing I'd do is queue for a match via matchmaking without crew form, especially as long as it doesn't put me in with a captain I feel comfortable crewing for..
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Hi Mezhu, I know what you mean, and this is why we allow for crew form. Yet, crew forms tend to be the worst balanced cases in the match maker right now, both substantively and perceptually, especially in edge cases where our best players crew form into them and there aren't enough novices to form a novice match. I just got another report of this, and once again, it was a crew form match. Herein lies the dilemma for us. A feature like crew form is great for social interaction and community building. Yet, it hurts our ability to balance the games.
This is what we are struggling with and are up against. We've tightened narrowed our match making criteria for both novice and rating balance, and hope that can help a bit. But fundamentally, if we want to keep crew form, we might not ever have a perfectly balanced match system.
It's tough is all I'm saying. We'll keep working and improving though.
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Which is why I'm suggesting for the MM system to treat these crews differently, look for other similar stacks even within running games and attempt putting them all in the same lobby sooner or later, even if that means some of them having to wait a bit longer.. Of course that would also require no rematching but instead throwing everyone back to the queue once a game's over.
But anyway, not allowing players to queue up with their friends because they're 'too good' or 'too new' doesn't seem like a legit solution
I think that's in everyone's best interest. Experienced players who stack up together don't do it for the sake of pubstomping, they do it because that's how they're enjoying the game and, more often than not, are looking for a challenging game. And that's when they're dangerous to lobby balance- when solo queuing they're not as a significant factor in determining the lobby's balance and thus don't require any special treatment by the MM.
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Muse: "If it ain't broke don't fix it."
That is all.
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^ So we have to go back to 1.3.7 I gues...
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^ So we have to go back to 1.3.7 I gues...
I would be totally fine with that.
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^ So we have to go back to 1.3.7 I gues...
Good luck with that.
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Mehzu, I agree, but the other factor is leaving a lobby. Of the reported cases of stacking in match so far, a majority of these cases, after we investigated them, found that it was because the original balance was disrupted when high lv players on the other side left. I guess my point is that there are usually multiple factors at work. A compromise solution is to cap rematches to say at 3. This way, the long run queueing population would be less disrupted, and people can still get to play with one another for a few matches. We could try to do something like that.
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@geo, I also saw your comments in the hotfix post. I haven't had the chance to reply there yet, but Matt is working on that. So, specifically, let me just try to understand the crux of your issues better. You wanted the match list back and you want to show levels everywhere right? Actually, just for my anecdotal data collection's sake, how many friends do you have in your friend list? And also, can you help me by telling me your reasoning for wanting to have levels displayed in the lobby? This is just to help me to understand your reasoning so I can better help address your issues. I of course always respect your feedback. Thanks!
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@Replaceable, oh boy, I guess to debate the merits of the old system vs the new, I have to go through all the points all over again. Our room's heating hadn't turned on or isn't working (and hope it will at some point...), so my fingers are too numb for writing something too long form at the moment. But you can find me on steam if you want to debate it, and I would gladly go through everything again, but I hope you can forgive me if I don't want to type that much but instead we can just talk. If that's ok, ping me on Steam.
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@Mr. Disaster, doh, ok not completely unreasonable I suppose, but I thought you hated 1.3.7 as well? I don't think we could ever win or make you happy :( We'll keep trying though.
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@geo, oh oh, and about the goldfish fix, argh great catch. That one for some reason didn't get deployed properly. It should be in now. If you get a small update (446), it should have this fix in it. Really sorry about this one. Thanks!
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Well 1.3.7 had it's issues but despite them I came back with pleasure knowing that "it just happens sometimes".
1.3.8 makes me want to delete the game
So, in comparison the 1.3.7 was a pleasant game with issues, the 1.3.8 is broken and unpleasant. I had an impression that 1.3.8 is taking one step ahead to take two steps back.
Edit: I really like(d?) that game, that's why I react so harsh when I see you breaking it (at least for me). I bought it on sale during holidays and just played it like 6 or more hours a day, every day for two months.
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@Mr. Disaster, yeah I know. And you know that I respect your opinion always, and that we had numerous discussions on this prior to release.
I think with the match system, it's not perfect. Looking at last week's data, we objectively did better on time to match start, and did better than the old system on match balance (I can go into how we computed the stats, but let me do that through voice comm. It is really freezing in our room, I kid you not.) But we didn't do as well as we expected, which was disappointing to us, and we started to investigate why. And the long story short is that, some of the same issues we had in the old system about balance vs community features are affecting the new system as well. But now this is the really tough question. If you want to in the new system, you can without too much effort recreate the old system. For example, if you want the old match list back, you can literally just add a bunch of people as friends. To be quicker, if you want to help us teach new players, you'll have the old match list back pretty much right away. If you want to friend join, you can, crew form you can, leave matches at will you can, scramble you can, ship swap you can. But these things hamper the new system like they do the old match system.
So I don't disagree with you, but probably only in terms of the extent. I think we've taken a step forward and likely a half step back. But that half step back is also trying accommodate you guys' requests for better community and social features. So it's tough. It doesn't mean that we're not trying really hard, but it's tough.
And there are different perspectives at play here. For example, the old match system worked well for you, because you've had extensive experience and familiarity with it. Then for me the question becomes, ok, can the new match system support your use case of match list browsing, and I sincerely think yes. Granted, there is a bit of social engineering here, but this is not unlike what Steam tries to do, which is to filter and curate things with friends. We got this idea from testers, and adopted it. I think it's quite brilliant (giving full credit to you guys for coming up with the original idea) because it does a better job filtering the matches, assuming people don't mind adding some friends that they enjoy playing with. It's a little bit more work up front, but I believe that the result in the long run is a better one.
Mr. Disaster, we know that you are criticizing because you care, and I think it should be fair for me to say that we're always listening. I know we don't always make decisions that you agree with, but we're trying. And we try to think things through and listen to people's opinions as much as humanly possible contrary to what some people believe.
All I can do is to try to continue to improve the system, to make sure we support use cases for vets like you, and to continue to strive to juggle them against issues such as balance. I absolutely appreciate you candor and we can take the criticism, that's what we are here for.
Thanks a lot. Howard
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@Mr. Disaster, also, if you don't find the match maker to be working, give custom game and the match list a shot. Personally I found that once I have 50-100 friends added, the match list worked well for me. I'm likely biased I know, but I don't think I'm talking BS here.
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Lot of this could have been addressed had more people spoken up before instead of waiting till things got to this point. Given Muse some real feedback. There were many who had concerns about MM that were willing to chat about it personally but not willing to make a formal post. Say something!! Stop hiding behind those who are willing to make the post!! Now they're upset and it's their own fault. I tried to relay things for a few but 1 person doing it isn't enough.
I'm not happy about all this and I have no desire to play outside of events now, but I did what I could to try and relay concerns and present solutions so this wouldn't happen. Now it's happened and I have no regrets here. Muse is a good company and they are willing to listen but you need to speak up.
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@Bubbles
Thanks for the response,
I'm actually indifferent to matchmaking in its current form as usually I can find a game by virtue of my friends list c.110 players (not sure if i skipped a few when counting).
The main reason I want the levels displayed in lobby is both to gauge the experience of the other team to fight them as is or whether we need to swap to the other side to balance the lobby (as I am not matchmaking into the lobbies).
The second reason is because I spent so much time getting them in the first place and want to show them off. I feel like you have taken something away from me and devalued the effort I put into getting the levels. (which I got through the old achievement system)
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My main point of dissatisfaction with the current match making system is being put on crews that doesn't know what they are doing, and having no way of influencing the situation. This happens mostly when I match make as an engineer. Match making as a pilot gives me enough control over the situation that I can make a novice crew functional in a few games.
The most satisfying moments in this game come through working with a solid crew. Those moments have become fewer when I let the algorithm select who I play with. After a few frustrating games I am at the point where I start looking through my friends list to create a "stacked" ship and match balance be damned.
On a whole I like the side effects of the match making system like reduces the lobby wait and the reduction of mid game powder monkey joins. I just resent the match making system is putting me in impossible situations under the assumption that my individual contribution will be enough to prop up a doomed ship.
This is how I imagined the match making system would work before the reality was revealed:
* When some hits Play on the main menu, they are put in a crew form screen for just one ship. If the ship has played a few matches it will have a ranking, but if the ship is formed by people who just logged in it will be put at the lowest rank.
* When the captain is ready the ship is put into the match queue where it's rank is used to determine which lobby it is put into. Based on the ships performance in the match, (ie if it won, number of kills, damage dealt, damage absorbed and repaired) the rank is adjusted to indicate how dangerous a ship is.
* Once in lobby the ships have a minute or two to come up with a plan and reconfigure their ship to the match.
* After the match the ship is put back in the single ship crew form where the captain and crew can set themselves for the next match, or take on new crew members to replace those who left.
* If the crew can't work together they can leave the crew form and be randomly matched as individuals again.
Essentially the whole system would work like a game wide ship scramble where each game will be fought between ships of equivalent skill level. There is no rank data is ascribed to the individual and the formation of ships is done by pure randomization or manually via the friend's list. If there are no ships of equivalent ranking to face a high ranked ship that ship may be paired with a low ranked ship against two medium ranked ships. Multi ship clans can create their own custom servers and get ships put into them based on the combined clan ship rankings.
I am not demanding this system be used as it is obvious Muse spent a lot of effort making the current system. I just dream of what could have been.
PS should I have stuck this in a new thread? I feel it has gotten a bit rantey.
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Everything HamsterIV said.
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@Bubbles
If you want to in the new system, you can without too much effort recreate the old system. For example, if you want the old match list back, you can literally just add a bunch of people as friends.
This is unfair, I don't like this. I'm an introvert in real life therefore I have introvertic way of being also in GOIO which means I pick my friends with care. To add someone as friend I need to fly with him/her a few times, having him/her doing a good job and fun together. I think I have like ~50 people on my friend list and I will not accept this "solution" of my problem. This is no argument to me and stop repeating that because it's just....unpleasant. If you truly believe this is some "back door" from matchmaking then bring back the regular server list or do the suggestion below.
But these things hamper the new system like they do the old match system.
I can understand that, and that's why I suggested some partially solution to combine two systems: make a regular server list with all the community options (unable to reach from MM or maybe only as selectable option) and matchmaking games with no (or almost no) community options so it's really focused on balance. I strongly believe that this way you may keep both sides of the discussion happy (although it may take some work).
So I don't disagree with you, but probably only in terms of the extent. I think we've taken a step forward and likely a half step back. But that half step back is also trying accommodate you guys' requests for better community and social features. So it's tough. It doesn't mean that we're not trying really hard, but it's tough.
I understand that you work hard and that everyone makes mistakes - I'm saying from my gaming experience perspective. For me playing 1.3.7 (or rather - going to play) was much better than in 1.3.8 + hotfix. So for me it's a step back. Then again - I never actually supported or believed in matchmaking.
I won't comment the next paragraph because it's unpleasant again.
Mr. Disaster, we know that you are criticizing because you care, and I think it should be fair for me to say that we're always listening. I know we don't always make decisions that you agree with, but we're trying. And we try to think things through and listen to people's opinions as much as humanly possible contrary to what some people believe.
All I can do is to try to continue to improve the system, to make sure we support use cases for vets like you, and to continue to strive to juggle them against issues such as balance. I absolutely appreciate you candor and we can take the criticism, that's what we are here for.
Holy shit someone just called me a veteran! Did you guys all see that? :D
Well you're right. You're doing all you can and we're also doing all we can. And with some good will we'll meet somewhere in the middle.
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@Mr. Disaster, also, if you don't find the match maker to be working, give custom game and the match list a shot.
We gave it a shot, and we shot our feet. :(
I mean, we tried to set up the custom game, and 20 minutes after we started nobody even passed by. Not a SINGLE person. That was annoying.
After that we were told, that there is some magical button that allows people to get in from the matchmaker, but honestly, I find GUI so not transparent now, we haven't noticed that one for TWENTY minutes...
And by inviting friends... Really? No offence, but this looks much like you gave us first solution coming to your head, it doesn't cool thing you know... and in fact - I find that one a litlle offensive, because I invite people I like / I respect - and those who know me personally know, how fucking tough it is to earn my friendship, not to mention my respect.
But suddenly I have to go against my own life rules to play comfortably this game? No bloody way.
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On the point about not allowing custom game to pull from match maker, yeah we can do that. We had it designed like that initially, and changed it because we took feedback from player testers that they would like help filling matches. If the vet custom game creates and fine with recruiting players not from match maker, we could easily revert back to not allowing custom games to pull from match maker. But I don't want to keep changing back and forth though, so if this is the majority will, we can do that.
the custom matches definitely need a way to fill, and with half the player base using matchmaking and half using match list, I don't know if match list is going to be enough. it may be. it may be fine. I don't think any of us are going to know the answer to that until it gets released with some data, though, and I cannot say one way or another until that happens.
so Howard, if you're really thinking this is a good way to go and you don't want to keep swapping how custom games fill, my suggestion would be leave the matchmaker filling as it does now, pull some data after the match list gets implemented, then make a decision (and put out a call for some feedback from us then if you'd like, before you do.) see if the custom games do need filled by more than the match list or if the matchmaker games aren't filling enough since the custom games are hogging the players.
I still think the best bet would be to make it optional to everyone involved - both the creator of the custom game to open it to match maker, and the player, whether they prefer to be placed quickly or have balanced matches, but if there's not enough people using matchmaker for it to fill the balanced lobbies, obviously it's a bad idea.
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Well you're right. You're doing all you can and we're also doing all we can. And with some good will we'll meet somewhere in the middle.
This is nice in theory, but so far like 90% of the complaints seem to be "I hate it get rid of it bring back previous patch!"
We gave it a shot, and we shot our feet. :(
I mean, we tried to set up the custom game, and 20 minutes after we started nobody even passed by. Not a SINGLE person. That was annoying.
After that we were told, that there is some magical button that allows people to get in from the matchmaker, but honestly, I find GUI so not transparent now, we haven't noticed that one for TWENTY minutes...
It's a very large button at the bottom of the screen.
If you're not able to find that for 20 minutes... I dunno man, I dunno what to say.
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Well you're right. You're doing all you can and we're also doing all we can. And with some good will we'll meet somewhere in the middle.
This is nice in theory, but so far like 90% of the complaints seem to be "I hate it get rid of it bring back previous patch!"
We gave it a shot, and we shot our feet. :(
I mean, we tried to set up the custom game, and 20 minutes after we started nobody even passed by. Not a SINGLE person. That was annoying.
After that we were told, that there is some magical button that allows people to get in from the matchmaker, but honestly, I find GUI so not transparent now, we haven't noticed that one for TWENTY minutes...
It's a very large button at the bottom of the screen.
If you're not able to find that for 20 minutes... I dunno man, I dunno what to say.
I couldn't find it at first either - because i wasn't expecting it. Its not like muse gave a manual for the UI and matchmaking.
Food for thought:
If 90% of the comments are passionatley saying: I hate it, its bad, bring it back to how it was before!
Maybe its because: People hate it, its bad, and muse should bring it back to how it was before.
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...I have been pushing for the idea that there should be two systems: Matchmaking (MM) and Match List (ML) for a long time. The community pushed to have quick join removed for a long time, and the idea of matchmaking was supported mainly as an alternative to quick join. Why should we, the veteran players, those who are part of the reason why this game has such a good community overall, have to suffer? Why are we, the veterans, having to deal with a system that degrades the community experience, strategy, general craziness, and overall fun and entertainment value of the game, why all of this just so that the shorter-term, pick-up, play the game, all of two or some-odd times, not giving half a damn about the community get a system designed with just them in mind, stripped down to provide just a glimpse at the depth of the game? Is it not us, the veterans, those who continually help, by giving assistance, feedback, sending in well-informed reports, self-policing and discouraging toxicity amongst the community. Is it not the veterans who are the ones teaching the newbies, pushing the limits on the depth of the game, and helping nurture the community who hold up the community standards, actually care, growing and sustaining the community with a passion, one that dwarfs any found in most of the largest, most popular games in existence? Why should we, the community as a whole, get off with the short end of the stick, with the social aspects of the games, such as the possibility of meeting someone in a random lobby, someone who could eventually become a new friend, a new acquaintance, or even a person who could become in the future a new clan member, reduced or removed entirely? What exactly was Muse's point when they removed one of the most integral portions of the community the match list, the social hub of the game, by basically ripping out its heart, and trying to replace it with a lesser alternative?
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You know why there aren't two systems macmac?
Because 80% of the community wouldn't use matchmaking at all, and then the matchmaking wouldn't work because there would only be about 40 people online at any one time who actually want to use it.
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if that were the case, wouldn't Muse have its answer as to which is the better option for the player base for now?
and note, I'm not saying after the fact get rid of the system, I'm saying hide it until the player base is big enough to handle it.
all hypothetically. I think there's more people screaming for balance directly to the devs than we realize. I suspect the split's closer to 50/50. and I'm not sure we have the numbers to carry more than one system either way.
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Then, shall we ask for the number of unique users who sent muse e-mails to them with a pro-matchmaking message and those who sent e-mails with a pro-match list message? Therefore we can tally it up, with only some difficulty.
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lol. you can if you want to. that's not for me to know.
so I should probably stop speculating..........
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Well you're right. You're doing all you can and we're also doing all we can. And with some good will we'll meet somewhere in the middle.
This is nice in theory, but so far like 90% of the complaints seem to be "I hate it get rid of it bring back previous patch!"
I could say that 90% of the responses to complaints seem to be "You stupid. This system good. Simple good." ;)
But what you're saying is not true. Although at the beginning it was more emotional, after time everyone gave it some thought and we had some good posts and some good arguments. We write what we, as players, don't like and why.
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...I have been pushing for the idea that there should be two systems: Matchmaking (MM) and Match List (ML) for a long time. The community pushed to have quick join removed for a long time, and the idea of matchmaking was supported mainly as an alternative to quick join. Why should we, the veteran players, those who are part of the reason why this game has such a good community overall, have to suffer? Why are we, the veterans, having to deal with a system that degrades the community experience, strategy, general craziness, and overall fun and entertainment value of the game, why all of this just so that the shorter-term, pick-up, play the game, all of two or some-odd times, not giving half a damn about the community get a system designed with just them in mind, stripped down to provide just a glimpse at the depth of the game? Is it not us, the veterans, those who continually help, by giving assistance, feedback, sending in well-informed reports, self-policing and discouraging toxicity amongst the community. Is it not the veterans who are the ones teaching the newbies, pushing the limits on the depth of the game, and helping nurture the community who hold up the community standards, actually care, growing and sustaining the community with a passion, one that dwarfs any found in most of the largest, most popular games in existence? Why should we, the community as a whole, get off with the short end of the stick, with the social aspects of the games, such as the possibility of meeting someone in a random lobby, someone who could eventually become a new friend, a new acquaintance, or even a person who could become in the future a new clan member, reduced or removed entirely? What exactly was Muse's point when they removed one of the most integral portions of the community the match list, the social hub of the game, by basically ripping out its heart, and trying to replace it with a lesser alternative?
+5000 Gilder rep points to Macmac
Yeah we needed 2 systems. Big reason we fought Quick Join so hard was because it was extremely detrimental to gameplay. Everyone would quick join gunner and you'd have ships with 3 gunners all the time. I remember addressing this specifically about MM because in the tests I saw multiple gunners happening. Said outright, what the point of MM was if it was just quick join with extra menus? Unless there was intelligent funneling of players, MM was going to flop hard.
Now here we are...lemmie get my Mr. Floppy out...
(http://r14.imgfast.net/users/1412/12/45/32/avatars/10-27.gif)
Ok...thats better.
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The attached picture is indicative of my match making experience:
This is was not a balanced game, this was a 5-0 stomping that I managed to make last a few minutes longer than it should have. The captain decided he didn't want to fly after his first death, and the other engineer was set for buffing. This is why I join on friends and stack lobbies. After a match or two of this I care nothing for balanced matches, I just want to watch the world burn.
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If 90% of comments say 'it's bad change it', it's not necesserily bad. It's just people are very vocal when it comes to the game not meeting their expectations, be them logical or not.
On the other hand, even proponents of the matchmaking system like me tend to focus on the perceived negatives of the system rather than praise and congratulate muse on their efforts.
Realistically, so far all the complaints of the game becoming 'antisocial' and statements of the sort 'imma delete it' (nothing new, same exaggeration and tears every patch) have mostly been without basis. Your friends are still there, the means of joining them as well. Stop whining already about how special you are and how you want the game to remain the exact same for the next 3 years. Could we turn the focus back on the actual issues of matchmaking and ways of improving it?
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That has kinda been the point in many of these posts. There have been notes on improving it and a desire to see it functional along with preserving some of the original game. To reach a "compromise" as has been attempted. Many of them are ones that were made back during the big tests before it went live and are being mentioned again because obviously the message didn't get across. The fact that you can have multiple gunners on any boat just says enough of how broken this is and how it is not really much better than the quick join system it replaced.
Thx for paying attention Mez.
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...I have been pushing for the idea that there should be two systems: Matchmaking (MM) and Match List (ML) for a long time. The community pushed to have quick join removed for a long time, and the idea of matchmaking was supported mainly as an alternative to quick join. Why should we, the veteran players, those who are part of the reason why this game has such a good community overall, have to suffer? Why are we, the veterans, having to deal with a system that degrades the community experience, strategy, general craziness, and overall fun and entertainment value of the game, why all of this just so that the shorter-term, pick-up, play the game, all of two or some-odd times, not giving half a damn about the community get a system designed with just them in mind, stripped down to provide just a glimpse at the depth of the game? Is it not us, the veterans, those who continually help, by giving assistance, feedback, sending in well-informed reports, self-policing and discouraging toxicity amongst the community. Is it not the veterans who are the ones teaching the newbies, pushing the limits on the depth of the game, and helping nurture the community who hold up the community standards, actually care, growing and sustaining the community with a passion, one that dwarfs any found in most of the largest, most popular games in existence? Why should we, the community as a whole, get off with the short end of the stick, with the social aspects of the games, such as the possibility of meeting someone in a random lobby, someone who could eventually become a new friend, a new acquaintance, or even a person who could become in the future a new clan member, reduced or removed entirely? What exactly was Muse's point when they removed one of the most integral portions of the community the match list, the social hub of the game, by basically ripping out its heart, and trying to replace it with a lesser alternative?
Amen. If you introduce such a drastically different system, there are bound to be issues people have with it, no matter how polished it is before you release it. Especially when you remove so much functionality that people are used to having. That is the purpose of testing. However, testing has a finite member base and you'll never be able to get all the feedback you need from a small test bed.
If you split it up into two separate systems and then took some analytics on what people are choosing to use I think you'll find that the new MM has a spike initially as people try it out and give it a chance and then the old 1.3.7 system will be preferred by the bulk of the community. At least that's the feel I get from most people I talk to in the game about it, but I could be wrong. I stand by my assertion that the number of people waiting for a match at a given time is not large enough to make a matchmaking system work properly. I feel that no matter how much tweaking you do to MM it just can't work in a community this size.
The bottom line is, we had to made concessions to make the match system flexible for you guys to foster, expand on, or retain the social, community, and custom features. These unfortunately impact the match maker's ability to balance matches individually and in totality.
We can't take complaints about lacking social features and lacking perfect balance at the same time, and be expected to achieve both. We are trying, and will continue to try. But being totally honest, to have all the social features you guys want, and to achieve perfect balance for every match is impossible, as these are opposing forces tugging at each other.
I feel that Muse is listening more to a bulk of emails from people who buy the game on steam sale and then complain because it's too hard than to those who have stuck around and learned the game and got good at it and have found compatible people to play with. Teamwork is key to this game and I feel that this MM system is punishing groups who have achieved what this game is about, finding a group of people who you can cooperate with to achieve a common goal. If you remove the function to allow people to choose who they are crewing with, you completely butcher the game. If we are weighing the merits of balance vs. social features, aka control, then on my scale you'd need a ladder to reach balance because control weighs so much. I already felt as if captains should have had more control in 1.3.7 than they did, not less.
fuck it. just add everyone to your watch-list, and have all the costume matches.
then let's just request a separate (consensual) friends-list and have them be a different colour.
that's the only way to cheat yourself match lists back.
just give us a separate friend-list and i will get off your back. promise.
Another point is, B'Elanna is right. The more friends you add, the more the friend match list becomes the old match list. The way of tech is headed towards friend curation and filtering, and so are we. I think it's the right way to go.
Really? Can't you tell that she's being facetious here? Friend curation and filtering are the way that tech is heading eh? Some of us don't have facebook accounts because we loathe this sort of friend curation behavior and boycott social media. The moment I see the button to link to my facebook account to populate my friends list I'm out. Ugh.
@Mr. Disaster, also, if you don't find the match maker to be working, give custom game and the match list a shot. Personally I found that once I have 50-100 friends added, the match list worked well for me. I'm likely biased I know, but I don't think I'm talking BS here.
@Bubbles
If you want to in the new system, you can without too much effort recreate the old system. For example, if you want the old match list back, you can literally just add a bunch of people as friends.
This is unfair, I don't like this. I'm an introvert in real life therefore I have introvertic way of being also in GOIO which means I pick my friends with care. To add someone as friend I need to fly with him/her a few times, having him/her doing a good job and fun together. I think I have like ~50 people on my friend list and I will not accept this "solution" of my problem. This is no argument to me and stop repeating that because it's just....unpleasant. If you truly believe this is some "back door" from matchmaking then bring back the regular server list or do the suggestion below.
I agree completely. The idea you propose that we just add more friends certainly sounds like a work-around and not a solution. Custom games is not the answer to all of our problems by any means because custom games are not browsable by the community at large. If custom games behaved like the old lobby system in 1.3.7 then the answer of "just use custom games" would be acceptable to me.
As for some sort of penalty invoked for leaving a lobby that I don't like the looks of. I wouldn't care in the least bit. Levels mean nothing to me. There is no difference between anybody in this game, which is great and not something I would want to change. It is good that the only difference between a level 1 and a level 45 is experience and personal skill garnered from that experience. Levels are strictly cosmetic and mean nothing at all. Match count gives you much more indication on somebody's ability than level. Ding my level all you want. Add a counter in hot pink in an attempt to publicly shame me. Do whatever you think appropriate. It will still not prevent me from bailing on a lobby where MM sticks me on a ship with all brand new players.
I just tried playing a few matches with a friend me as a high level engi, him as a high level pilot, and we were paired with two people with less than 20 games to make up the rest of our boat each time. While I don't mind teaching people the mechanics of the game and repeating myself 30 times every once in a while, I certainly don't want to do that every match. It gets old arguing with new players about the reasons we don't want a gunner on our boat (but the uselessness of the gunner class is not the topic here). Usually when I want to play a game I just want to relax and have fun. That was easily accomplished by taking a look at the few lobbies that are going and figuring out which match had the veterans congregating in it and joining up, or spectating for a little bit while I waited for a spot. Now all the veterans are spread out across various lobbies serving in indentured slavery as tutors. MM is causing this game to become significantly less fun than it used to be because as it is right now it's just too damned frustrating to play more than a few matches.
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^ Greenbreeze, so much amen in one post. I owe ya a beer. Or a whole keg.
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If 90% of comments say 'it's bad change it', it's not necesserily bad. It's just people are very vocal when it comes to the game not meeting their expectations, be them logical or not.
On the other hand, even proponents of the matchmaking system like me tend to focus on the perceived negatives of the system rather than praise and congratulate muse on their efforts.
Realistically, so far all the complaints of the game becoming 'antisocial' and statements of the sort 'imma delete it' (nothing new, same exaggeration and tears every patch) have mostly been without basis. Your friends are still there, the means of joining them as well. Stop whining already about how special you are and how you want the game to remain the exact same for the next 3 years. Could we turn the focus back on the actual issues of matchmaking and ways of improving it?
You're completely mistaken. At least. We all have specific problems with current patch and we state what are they and why we think they are bad. If matchmaker puts me only in matches that end up with 5:0, with a crew with at least two gunners and people who played <50 games then it's not "my opinion" - it's just a fact that the system, the matchmaker, doesn't work (as planned). Also that since new patch I played 3v3 literally ONCE (4v4? Pff, dream) although I always choose 3v3 option and play ONLY in prime time hours (be it 8-12 pm GMT+1 as Steam stats says). With previous system I had 3v3s and 4v4 all the time. And more or less balanced games. And most of them relatively quick (5 minute is agreeable time to wait) because I could look at the lobby and hop in when it's somewhere around 12-14/16. Previous system for me worked relatively well and the reasons it didn't work was mostly single individuals fucking things up (nothing changed here drastically) or small amount of people in the game (which hasn't changed AT ALL).
Also as many pointed out the hiding level thing only make us do more clicks to find out. It achieved nothing apart from frustrating the players. There's a proverb - don't fix it if it ain't broken (in my country we say "Don't fix the watch that goes well/ shows correct hour").
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As if the lobby system wasn't problematic, kek. Improving and adding to the game is not "fixing what's not broken". Try providing actual feedback and suggestions instead of whining and asking for reverts. I don't disagree with the points you make, I've written my opinions on the same issues quite a few times as well- I just despise the model post that you and many others are so eager to copy-paste every new patch: 'I will delete game'.
Well go fucking ahead. The fact you've played the game for however long you have doesn't entitle you to determining its' development goals and standards. You can share your opinion, as does everyone else, and it probably does have a higher impact than that of a relatively newer player. However, expecting the developers to instantly go by it simply because you said so isn't just plain arrogant, it's stupid.
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It was problematic sometimes, aye. But it was not broken.
The Matchfaker IS broken. Maybe for devs it works well, but not for players who experienced what was previous.
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The Matchmaking system has been less fun for me than lobby hunting.
Glicko and player levels don't reflect the two main things I look for in friends on GoI:
1. Personality
2. Microphone use
My clan (DAGZ) is not geared toward competitive play (i.e.- tournaments). We enjoy playing with a wide variety of GoI community members, from the very deadliest to the greenest of noobs, but only when they are personable.
The GoI community is what makes it a fun game to play, and keeps us coming back, and we like to meet new players and make new friends through playing in public lobbies.
The matchmaking system imposes an unknown criteria on our games, and removes the ability to gravitate toward players we enjoy playing the game with. For some it people means finding really competent veterans, for others it means finding people they get along with.
In a game where communication and teamwork rule, I find it better to crew with players that use their microphone, are willing to cooperate, and speak a common language.
Game balance is something that seems to works it's self out when you have a good community. I have been in plenty of situations where I was welcomed by vets as a low level player, and a few when I was avoided (i.e. feared) by lower level players. Most of the people who I enjoy playing with are willing to create game balance on their own if they are in a lobby with people who are willing to communicate and want to have fun.
Impydog
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I wonder how many people remember that half the reason we have matchmaking is because Lobbies of Icarus sucked, and the other half is because we need it to expand to the PS4 (which as far as I know is still in the works).
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I wonder how many people remember that half the reason we have matchmaking is because Lobbies of Icarus sucked, and the other half is because we need it to expand to the PS4 (which as far as I know is still in the works).
Never thought lobbies of Icarus sucked....needed some improvements which I think they could have accomplished simply with the captain recommended load outs and the new leveling system like they have. But Lobbies of Icarus is one of the things that makes me come back to this game every single day. It is the only game that has such personal interactions that people actually make friends and I'm not meaning just gaming friends. People have created "in real life" friends with other players in this community. The lobbies is what has allowed for such interactions...the timed lobbies has stunted that and I have suggested making timed lobbies a select able preference like the swap lobbies is(was).
As far as expanding to the PS4...Is it still in the works? haven't heard anything about that for a while now. Also, I much rather have co-op or adventure mode come out before we expand to other platforms.
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I wonder how many people remember that half the reason we have matchmaking is because Lobbies of Icarus sucked, and the other half is because we need it to expand to the PS4 (which as far as I know is still in the works).
Never thought lobbies of Icarus sucked....needed some improvements which I think they could have accomplished simply with the captain recommended load outs and the new leveling system like they have. But Lobbies of Icarus is one of the things that makes me come back to this game every single day. It is the only game that has such personal interactions that people actually make friends and I'm not meaning just gaming friends. People have created "in real life" friends with other players in this community. The lobbies is what has allowed for such interactions...the timed lobbies has stunted that and I have suggested making timed lobbies a select able preference like the swap lobbies is(was).
As far as expanding to the PS4...Is it still in the works? haven't heard anything about that for a while now. Also, I much rather have co-op or adventure mode come out before we expand to other platforms.
AFAIK they have the PS4 devkits, but co-op was taking priority. This was back in like April though so who knows how it's changed.
Anyways, it was almost general consensus that the lobby wait times were the biggest problem in the game, and I can probably find about three trillion posts complaining about Lobbies of Icarus. Matchmaking (stop calling it MM btw, you should know that's a clan by now D:) was a method to fix that.
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AFAIK they have the PS4 devkits, but co-op was taking priority. This was back in like April though so who knows how it's changed.
Anyways, it was almost general consensus that the lobby wait times were the biggest problem in the game, and I can probably find about three trillion posts complaining about Lobbies of Icarus. Matchmaking (stop calling it MM btw, you should know that's a clan by now D:) was a method to fix that.
This is why I suggest the timed lobbies as a select able preference. Not everyone complained about them and frankly I found the highest amounts of complaints coming from the newer players. If they were select able like the swap lobby function then players that wanted a fast game could simply select for timed lobbies and players that maybe having a good time with friends, talking strategy, playing clan vs clan, or any other random discussion that maybe taking more than the times lobby can simply have a lobbied not timed.
And yes since April...which was a while ago. It's more a curiosity than anything if this is still happening, since I'll still play on my PC.
And YES - MM is a clan and makes me think that every time I read that!
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@Mezhu
Try providing actual feedback and suggestions instead of whining and asking for reverts.
I actually did, several times. Pointed out what (in my feeling) is wrong and if I had an idea - how to fix it.
I don't disagree with the points you make, I've written my opinions on the same issues quite a few times as well- I just despise the model post that you and many others are so eager to copy-paste every new patch: 'I will delete game'.
Firstly - generalizing is always wrong :P (there's a trick in this sentence)
Secondly - when asked about comparison between 1.3.7 and 1.3.8 I said, truthfuly, that the flaws that 1.3.7 was acceptable (for me) and still didn't prevent me from having joy from game where flaws of 1.3.8 were so big that (in my opinion) game is barely playable. Then I moved to what I described above.
I also wrote that because of current changes I may not be a part of community soon (which I can base on the amount of time I played before 1.3.8 and after 1.3.8 )
Well go fucking ahead. The fact you've played the game for however long you have doesn't entitle you to determining its' development goals and standards. You can share your opinion, as does everyone else, and it probably does have a higher impact than that of a relatively newer player. However, expecting the developers to instantly go by it simply because you said so isn't just plain arrogant, it's stupid.
Oh, this is just silly. Not going to comment this further.
@Imagine
Anyways, it was almost general consensus that the lobby wait times were the biggest problem in the game, and I can probably find about three trillion posts complaining about Lobbies of Icarus. Matchmaking (stop calling it MM btw, you should know that's a clan by now D:) was a method to fix that.
In some cases it failed even to do that, not speaking about issues I've been adressing this whole time and extinct game sizes and modes.
Although I fully agree on not calling matchmaking "MM".
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PS4 had to wait on Unity to update to do it. MM indeed would be perfect for console play. I saw the logic in the move to MM, but this isn't a viable MM for the community, nor is it viable for PS4.
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@Geo, no worries! Sorry for the late reply. Yeah your point on the level display is valid. Let me just go over the reasoning again. The cosmetic levels that's displayed is as you know an indicator of how much someone has played, but it's not necessarily a direct reflection of how well someone has played. Take me for example. I'm considered high level, but I'm not nearly at your skill level. So the rating that we use for the match maker should account for how well someone plays, and there isn't necessarily a one to one correlation. So, we found in certain cases, people look at the levels, and already decided that the match was out of balance, while in reality, the match was quite in balance (meaning the prematch ratings on either side was actually fairly close, and that the match results reflected that). So while you're right in that the implementation of hiding lvs in lobby is only cursory, it's done to at least attempt to disassociate cosmetic levels and perceived balance indication/representation. But of course we do realize the highly important value of showing off your levels that you worked so hard for, and therefore we are showing it everywhere else where it doesn't directly impact the perception of match balance.
Yeah so that's really the rationale, and of course you're welcome to disagree. So there's what I would say. We'll call this an experiment. If we can definitely show that this helps balance, we can keep. Otherwise, we can roll back. If it doesn't work as we expected, then there's no point taking away from level display in all its glory. Hope this is a satisfactory response.
Thanks so much! Howard
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Yeah so that's really the rationale, and of course you're welcome to disagree. So there's what I would say. We'll call this an experiment. If we can definitely show that this helps balance, we can keep. Otherwise, we can roll back. If it doesn't work as we expected, then there's no point taking away from level display in all its glory. Hope this is a satisfactory response.
I'd be a bit more trusting of this if there had been a resolution to the tab lock down, an unpopular result of an experiment for a mechanic no one was asking for. When you say roll back, what kind of time frame are you talking?
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@Sammy, I'm not sure what you're referring to here? Sorry about that. Here let me put it this way, if you have a better idea about how to disassociate the perception that leveling is the measure of balance, let me know. I'm all ears. Would love to hear a better solution.
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https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3422.0.html (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,3422.0.html)
This was another problem caused by a fix no one was asking for.
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Bubbles....I don't actually understand how hiding the levels gives players the perception of balance or actual balance...Your community is an amazing community and I would say very little of us base a balanced lobby on levels alone. You guys worked very hard to create this new leveling system so that it would more accurately display a players level. This was released just over a week ago and for the most part I think works well. For people that achievement hunted it reflects that in the new levels and for people that honestly have tons of experience it also reflects that. So, why after a week are you hiding the new system you worked so hard on and people really didn't have issues with? The people that are stating their concerns for a balanced lobby (even though we use numbers to express it) are not basing this solely on numbers. We have been in game and have experienced matches that are just completely unbalanced due to how it is played and ends. Or like TeddyBearMafia stated with 1 veteran and 3 newer players all it takes is 1 newer player that doesn't want to listen and than the veteran stops wanting to teach. And Keyvias already stated that the match making system will do this (putting a high level with low levels) because it creates "balance" (mathematically, yes it probably does). However game play wise and player wise this isn't actually balanced and can become frustrating.
Since you guys worked so very hard at the new leveling system and your player base has worked so very hard to earn their levels and because seeing the levels in match actually can help veterans teach new players, which is what this community is about, I do wish that you would put the levels back in match.
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@Sammy Oh oh I see what you're referring to now. Wait, just to be clear, were you referring to muting in match? Or the disabling of movement on tab screen. If we're referring to muting in game, this was a feature request that we had quite a few requests for. But the byproduct that we did not anticipate was the locking of movement on tab screen. And this one we resolved right? I think?
On the present issue of level display. This isn't about what people ask for or not. This is not a feature request we're implementing. It's a way to address the issue of confusion between a level, which is by in large cosmetic, and a system of balance. Just want to make sure I'm on the same page.
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@KitKatKitty, ah, I see where the disconnect in this argument is now. Ok, let me go back a few steps. The intent of hiding the display in lobby is not about us thinking the leveling system doesn't work. The feedback we've been getting about the new level system has been pretty overwhelmingly positive. So the intent was, this wasn't about the level system, but about the match system. It's about people rushing to make balance judgements using level as cursory information and basis. What I forgot to mention is, based on quite a few of the reported cases we investigated, this misperception caused people to bail out on matches, which put more burden on the match maker (in part because of the design that accommodates leavers for not rejoining the same match right away) to balance a match. So, we thought it was a plausible solution to display people's levels in more places (agreeing wholeheartedly that people want to show off their levels), but take away level display in the one place that causes confusion.
The risk is obviously like what you and Geo stated, that we somehow are backtracking on leveling. I guess my point is just that, it's not the intent at all. This tweak was aimed at the match system, not the leveling system. If it doesn't work, we'll correct it and bring level display back.
To Sammy's question, the fix and roll back is not difficult. I would like to collect data for a week, especially given that we do have more new players come in this week. And see if this was effective at all. If not, I'll make it a point to make the adjustment. Does that make sense?
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I just want you guys to be consistent with hiding levels. Hide them everywhere except a special leaderboard, or show them everywhere. I can still see levels just by clicking on a name, or looking in match chat.
I still support hiding them, but only if you actually, you know, hide them.
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@Omni, yeah, you're right. The measure was meant to deter that first impulse of bailing, while still trying to serve people's desire to show off. It's a compromise. The match system is a compromise as well between social features that people want and wait time and balance and player preferences. Retaining a lot of the old system's social features, features that plagued the old system in the first place, is causing people grief in the new system. It's been a tough process. We'll keep working at it.
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Display MMR numbers. No reason to keep them hidden if this is basically a full field test and feedback is key to making new changes for the better. Can't give good feedback if we have no clue about what is happening or why we are being tossed into matches with these random people that we clearly outmatch.
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@Richard, reasonable request. But if we want to analyze data, which we are, displaying MMR numbers, like displaying levels, create sample and response bias and have to admit the impetus to game MMR rating numbers (that's just human nature, for some people anyway). The test of balance, or how well the match maker is doing it's job, is to actually compare match results with prematch balance. This is one consideration for example why MMR numbers are not shown. But call for data is totally valid. After this week, I'll find time to present these data again. I'll do a blog post on it. But give me a few days though, cuz I need time to collect and analyze this week's data. Thanks a lot!
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@Richard, another thing we're thinking about is a form of a league system, where you'll display your general ranking/level etc. This can give people a general idea, but not so specific as to create misinterpretation or misconception about balance. What do you think?
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I'm very much against it. Keep MMR hidden please, even 'leagues' and whatnot can create harmful elitism, people being scared to play to 'preserve their rating', etc.
The only distinction I would be willing to make is for novices who have less than N matches or less than N hours in match. Those should be distinguished.
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I was going to suggest a more general ranking system next, so thought approved. Some games allow you to join a general queue or a more league specific queue.
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Haven't had a single fun match since the match making system has been implemented. Just sayin...
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If I may... I'd like to say, that making any "leags" or something like that will make people go for some elite crap, and start thinking only about themselves. Honestly, guys. It's not what it's all about. I'm always being put with some guys, who don't know how to use microphone or chat, or keep having situations like today - galleon, 3 engies (5, 7 and my 12) + pilot (7), 2 of them on the upper board, and I'm completely alone on the lower deck, with 4 hwachas and engines which I need to repair constantly, because, well, why avoiding ambushes, or flying alone into the middle of the group of 3 enemy ships very close to each other? And of course - I keep telling them not to do so, BUT WHO CARES. I keep telling those guys that there is no need that both of them stay on upper deck, if even that can't help us to not being shot down, and I'm called selfish and rude, because "I want to play with my toys". Pardon fucking me, are you kidding me?
I can't even change ship, as I could do (and was doing) in 1.3.7, in cases I stumbled upon unreconstuctable idiots.
And honestly, you guys keep justifying yourselves by telling us that numbers are alright. Stop looking on cold numbers and join normal, matchmaker made match. This might look for you, in terms of maths, balanced, but the only result is keeping us frustrated and affraid, that there will surely come that one guy ignoring our teachings and orders, or even blame us for everything and calling us assholes, because we tell them when they are doing things wrong. It happened before, but somehow less frequently.
The other thing you achieved with you "well balanced" matches is fact that they last longer, and honestly... they are balanced. But ONLY paper. Seriously, today I had a match that ended with 12:9 or something like that. But you know what? It was so boring. It's not like I prefer slaughtering everything my spyglass see, but for Christ's sake, balance defined like that is deprived of any pleasure or thrill, leaving only frustration. And this was going like that for sooooo loooooong...
Oh, by the way. After mentioned match, in which crews of 3 ships abandoned the match, the new crews came, matchmaked I supposed. It was AFTER I joined the ship with my friends I couldn't join earlier because of the lack of free slot. So, as I understood, the matchmaker should take count on that we are quite good team and give us some worthy opponents...
...the coming match gave us like 9 kills, and 5 kills long kill streak. I mean, seriously?
And what's worse, you devs will STILL defend yourself with your numbers and statistics, and reports, still having your ears/eyes shoved up yer arse, pardon me, it annoys the hell out of me. It's not I want you guys to obey or whatever, but I want you to stop defensing yourself blindly and read what we try to tell you.
That's just wrong and sad.
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Yeah so that's really the rationale, and of course you're welcome to disagree. So there's what I would say. We'll call this an experiment. If we can definitely show that this helps balance, we can keep. Otherwise, we can roll back. If it doesn't work as we expected, then there's no point taking away from level display in all its glory. Hope this is a satisfactory response.
Thanks so much! Howard
Appreciate the replies Howard. I don't think a roll back is really necessary. You guys worked hard on this, and while its been a bit of a mess, there is a valid reason for it. You need the performance improvement, and also this is a step in the right direction for console play. Great, lets compromise and admit that MM is needed for these reasons.
Now, question, if the lobby list was such a huge offender, why do we have a friend's lobby list now? Shouldn't this be causing a performance hit that is just as bad? If it isn't a big hit, then lets build on it. Do more with custom games. They need to be able to be filled from MM and from list join. I thought what we'd get with MM was a custom feature where we could just make a lobby and sit in it till MM filled it. Sure there might be a lot of extra lobbies but that was the case in the past anyways because you had to so you could play 3v3 or 4v4. Now it seems we can't so I wonder outside of competitive what point is there? This should be changed. It also compromises because it allows a lobby to exist and utilize the MM system. So those that don't want to stare at a queue but actually work on ships or talk with MM joiners can do that. Social aspect restored!
That is just one simple step in the right direction. Figuring out how we can take the best from both worlds and make it happen.
(https://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me8ia2lvox1qmxm7u.gif)
Look through all the feedback. There are some very solid ideas presented not only here but in dev app. Some of them implemented would make MM much more easier to swallow. Howard if you guys can do that, then you've got my vote and probably quite a few others.
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@KitKatKitty, ah, I see where the disconnect in this argument is now.
Just so we are clear Bubbles...this (at least on my end) is not an argument. I am solely giving feedback to help make Guns the best game it can be. This game is probably as much of my life as it is yours and the very last thing I want to happen to it is that it dies because the community leaves due to a lack of communication.
I can understand that you do not want people bailing out of matches because of simply the levels of the players in the lobby and that you want people to give the match making system and unbiased try but I think I have valid points I made when it comes to the levels allowing Veterans to see who in the lobby may need assistance and training at the very least. I would think that newer players leaving mid match because they are getting slaughtered is just as negative if not more than an older player leaving the lobby before match to try to prevent said slaughter. Or when newer players leave because they don't want to listen to the suggestions of Veterans. Am I wrong? I've seen both happen quite often since the new system has came out. It's discouraging too, to be the Veteran player that has the new players leave mid match...and frankly the reason I say new players because I've hardly seen Veteran players display this behavior. Also....can I point out Guns has had a level system for 2 years...why is it a problem all of a sudden?
@Richard, another thing we're thinking about is a form of a league system, where you'll display your general ranking/level etc. This can give people a general idea, but not so specific as to create misinterpretation or misconception about balance. What do you think?
This I guess could be a compromise even though I would just like to use and show the levels right next to peoples names in lobbies like before.
Haven't had a single fun match since the match making system has been implemented. Just sayin...
The matches I have had the most fun in since the patch have been the custom ones that my friends and I balanced ourselves.
I can't even change ship, as I could do (and was doing) in 1.3.7, in cases I stumbled upon unreconstuctable idiots.
And honestly, you guys keep justifying yourselves by telling us that numbers are alright. Stop looking on cold numbers and join normal, matchmaker made match. This might look for you, in terms of maths, balanced, but the only result is keeping us frustrated and affraid, that there will surely come that one guy ignoring our teachings and orders, or even blame us for everything and calling us assholes, because we tell them when they are doing things wrong. It happened before, but somehow less frequently.
I do have to agree with this. Numbers are not everything and I'm a numbers person so it's hard for me to say that. I perfectly understand HOW the match making system puts me on certain ships to balance the lobby however....I have to agree with Schwable here.
The other thing you achieved with you "well balanced" matches is fact that they last longer, and honestly... they are balanced. But ONLY paper. Seriously, today I had a match that ended with 12:9 or something like that. But you know what? It was so boring. It's not like I prefer slaughtering everything my spyglass see, but for Christ's sake, balance defined like that is deprived of any pleasure or thrill, leaving only frustration. And this was going like that for sooooo loooooong...
If they are not a complete slaughter...the matches have been "closer" and longer BUT that's usually because there are players that aren't listening or not doing their job. I was in a 3v3 where a level 5 pilot was wondering around the match, not using mic, not using chat and not listening, while the level 43 pilot (the ship I was on) and level 35 pilot could only engage in 2v3 fights and try to fly around and protect the one ship flying off randomly so it wouldn't get killed over and over again. Might I add 5 people left mid match, all being lower level players. I would much rather have a close match where the majority of players all working to their highest capacity to play their best game ever because they are playing against players that are their "level" instead of because 1 or 2 Veterans are running around doing everything or trying to teach in between doing everything...isn't that what the "teaching" status is for and the novice matches? What many of the Veterans have came to is just making custom matches and not using the match making system.
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Let's be honest there are many problems with matchmaking, ranging from the simple such as the double gunner, to the more complex such as creating a balanced match.
In regards to the simple problem of the double gunner/pilot it is amazing how long this has gone unresolved. In the previous patch/hotfix for whatever reason the gunner and engineer icons have been merged together. Insinuating that there is an equal need for "gunners" as there is for engineers when in truth the gunner is a binary number... 1 or 0. (By the way can someone please explain to me why the A.I. gunner still exists?) Now in regards to the second pilot I don't even know how this is a thing...? Other's have suggested in the past that by blocking anyone that isn't in the captain position from using the pilot class this could be resolved. This is a step in the right direction, however I would add that the only positions available on a ship are the recommended load outs chosen by the captain of that particular ship. In addition to this I would also add that in lobby, a person cannot change to a second gunner without the first gunner acknowledging this change and being swapped to engineer as a result.
In regards to balance, I don't believe this can really be achieved as long as the "rematch" option is a feature. This is because it limits the player pool available, hence veterans are spread out over various matches often crushing less experienced players on "stacked" teams. I would also like to add there are numerous ways in which this community could be improved very easily. Such as creating an icon new players could display showing that they are willing to learn from Veterans willing to divulge information on the game. Team Fortress 2 allows players to receive a coach if they wish... But in a game that thrives on teamwork, there is little done to help new players develop so that they may achieve/see endgame... This could also explain why GoI player activity fluctuates so aggressively...
In all honesty I believe there is a large community of players invested in this game who want to see it prosper. However with the number of solutions and ideas that are posted that fail to see implementation or even acknowledgement, I'd wager the future of this game is surely threatened... Especially with Veteran players slowly being BURNT out :/
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Now in regards to the second pilot I don't even know how this is a thing...? Other's have suggested in the past that by blocking anyone that isn't in the captain position from using the pilot class this could be resolved. This is a step in the right direction, however I would add that the only positions available on a ship are the recommended load outs chosen by the captain of that particular ship. In addition to this I would also add that in lobby, a person cannot change to a second gunner without the first gunner acknowledging this change and being swapped to engineer as a result.
As much as I agree this may help these small problems and they are good ideas....Just want to add it takes away customization and fun....There has been many times in lobbies that all 4 players on all 4 ship have became pilots or gunners just for the fun of it and battled it out this way. Granted this isn't "serious" play and by far not the norm...however I would be sad to see this ability disappear because those are by far some of the funnest matches I have ever played and playing a game is all about fun with friends after all.
In regards to balance, I don't believe this can really be achieved as long as the "rematch" option is a feature. This is because it limits the player pool available, hence veterans are spread out over various matches often crushing less experienced players on "stacked" teams. I would also like to add there are numerous ways in which this community could be improved very easily. Such as creating an icon new players could display showing that they are willing to learn from Veterans willing to divulge information on the game. Team Fortress 2 allows players to receive a coach if they wish... But in a game that thrives on teamwork, there is little done to help new players develop so that they may achieve/see endgame... This could also explain why GoI player activity fluctuates so aggressively...
implementation or even acknowledgement, I'd wager the future of this game is surely threatened... Especially with Veteran players slowly being BURNT out :/
I actually like the idea of new players having a badge or icon indicating that they are willing (or not willing) to learn. This is a good ideal indeed.
Also agree, sadly, that the future of this game is surely threatened when it comes to Veteran Burn out.
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Matchmaking would, with work, work for the PS4 version of the game. However, it doesn't width well for the PC version, as it figured to balance out matches in the wrong way. We don't want balance in our matches, necessarily. We look for friends or good communications skills and microphone use, or at least crewmember responsiveness, which are things that cannot be really quantified. Things would be different if GLIKO took into account the people online on one's friendlist and their clanmembers, and had a higher chance of putting you with them or people with a similar amount of matches played.
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That would be the most reasonable solution, but this would be difficult to balance before putting into a game. Trust me, I'm a programmer.
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Just tried MM again today. Joined as 'crew'. Got into a match in less than 20 seconds as an engineer....
.....
.....
.... in the pilot seat of an empty ship. Before I could say "Well done, matchmaking.... well done....", it filled my ship with pilots.
I don't even know what to say. I just tipped my hat to the lobby, left, and joined on a friend.
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Okay I take it back matchmaking works awesome.
So awesome that the 4v4 on Flayed Hills I just came out of was so balanced in skill that it lasted
AN HOUR AND 45 MINUTES
Fuck this, I don't want to play balanced games.
On another note an engineer on my ship who had played through the whole game lost connection in the last 5 seconds and his match completion % dropped - I found this to be amusing.
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No geo, you just don't want to play flayed hills.
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I played a balanced match on Duel that lasted 40 minutes or more. It was only balanced because three pilots had no clue, and the forth pilot had a crew that had no clue.
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Hmmmmmmmmm. I'm sure I mentioned things alike few times, if not in this, then in the other thread...
BUT HEY, THE NUMBERS LOOK SO PRETTY
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Okay I take it back matchmaking works awesome.
So awesome that the 4v4 on Flayed Hills I just came out of was so balanced in skill that it lasted
AN HOUR AND 45 MINUTES
Fuck this, I don't want to play balanced games.
No, you just don't want to play Crazy King. At least half people I know auto-leaves the lobby when Crazy King appears because this shit is just endless. The related thread with changes suggestions can be found here:
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4818.0.html
Yesterday we had over 900 people online and matchmaking kept on dropping me to novice lobbies. Literally, only levels 1 and sometimes 2. Luckily I found some custom game with Clan clan. As far as I know the Devs acknowledge our concern about matchmaking mixing veterans and noobs so we should just wait and see if they are going to do something about it.
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I played a balanced match on Duel that lasted 40 minutes or more. It was only balanced because three pilots had no clue, and the forth pilot had a crew that had no clue.
Till you play a sniper battle on duel that lasts 2hrs, you have no right to complain about long battles on Duel. Bunch of babies :P :D
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I still find the MM system flawed, I have since it came out, not been placed on a ship with a crew that A: were above lvl 10, b: collectively outleveled me...
as I have stated in the game chat (repeatedly!) some times you just want to play a game with people you dont have to babysit and/or teach basic game mechanics... and right now that means having to do custom matches! so please add more options to MM as in maybe play only with X lvl ranges or players need at least X number of matches under their belts!
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I had a bit of an epiphany this morning. If match making considers my performance when assigning me to a crew, the way to get a on a good crew is to suck for a couple of matches. When I get paired with those level 1 mute crews I should just let them die as quickly as possible. I accept that the match making system is going to try and keep my win loss rate 1 to 1, so why should I put in the effort when the system has set me up to loose?
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Maybe if you leave all matches right before they end.
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Seriously...
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^Desperate times call for desperate means
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I played a balanced match on Duel that lasted 40 minutes or more. It was only balanced because three pilots had no clue, and the forth pilot had a crew that had no clue.
Till you play a sniper battle on duel that lasts 2hrs, you have no right to complain about long battles on Duel. Bunch of babies :P :D
Pfft, 2h sniper battle on a single map. I'd take that any day as a warm up for a sniper best of three scrim. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJWHvEBpqug)
but yeah, I agree ck matches tend to last too long.
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I was thinking about the tug-of-war we seem to be having between "balance" and flexibility. This raises of the question of why matches become "stacked". Is it because veterans wants to grind greenhorns into the ground? Is it because all we want is to win, at whatever cost to the poor newbies?
Nope.
It's because we want to play with the people we like. It's because playing with a communicative crew that has some idea what they are doing is what is fun to us. Would we prefer to have opponents of a similar skill bracket that challenge us? Of course, but with matchmaking it's much harder for us to set up a lobby of all higher-levels as we could with the lobby list where people would sort of come and go until matches balanced themselves. Nobody "stacks" to destroy ships of 2 powder monkeys and 2 pilots. We "stack" because we want to have fun. Friend join and crew formation are our last resources to attempt to get a match together of more experienced players. Please, please, please don't take these away from us. We are capable of balancing ourselves provided that your matchmaking system doesn't repeatedly throw extra level 1 pilots into crew slots on our ships.
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Pretty sure numbers show from before matchmaking that matches were not balanced on a regular basis. The "stacking" fun you're referring to may be fun for you, but was exceedingly frustrating for anyone on the other side.
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Then we need to figure out how to get the skill deviation in matches lower, because it's not fun for ANYBODY when more experienced players are forced to spend every match training newer players, and the newer players are getting yelled at, and everyone is floundering about equally poorly so therefore the match is technically "balanced"....
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Pretty sure numbers show from before matchmaking that matches were not balanced on a regular basis. The "stacking" fun you're referring to may be fun for you, but was exceedingly frustrating for anyone on the other side.
I tend to have little pity for the other side when they are not communicating and making poor decisions in presence of good advice. This is not true of all new player, but it is true enough times that I don't really care anymore when I am wrong. I would love to stack some lobbies with green named vets, but my the amount of time I can spend playing the game each night is getting shorter, and I just can't wait around for a slot to open on one of your ships.
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the amount of time I can spend playing the game each night is getting shorter, and I just can't wait around for a slot to open on one of your ships.
(http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/107/432/i_hug_that_feel.png)
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Well, with this sale it makes MM bearable. Just had 2-3hrs for our little casual practice of nothing but pub stomps. Virtually impossible to balance since theres soo many noobs on. The munker left satisfied today after feasting on the tears of broken dreams and shattered egos! :D
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Then we need to figure out how to get the skill deviation in matches lower, because it's not fun for ANYBODY when more experienced players are forced to spend every match training newer players, and the newer players are getting yelled at, and everyone is floundering about equally poorly so therefore the match is technically "balanced"....
That. So much. This game isn't CoD or League where you can try to save your score or fuck around if your team is full clueless. Luckily nothing is keeping us from stacking, so there's that, but the game has quickly become a game of hunt the monkeys. I don't think none of the veterans wants to be thrown into a new team and train them. Hell, I don't think even the CAs want to do that. And even if you try your best to be nice and patient, you'll usually be thanked with a STFU for your effort. So it's play the game the clueless way, stack against people who stand no chance, or don't play at all.
As CharlieDontSurf said on the Steam forums, pleeeeease consider throwing in the server browser with the matchmaking.
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My amount of time is getting shorter, yeah. But I'm willing MUCH less to stay...
Oh. I'm treated like this in, like 60% of MM matches. I mean, thanks in form of "STFU U FAGET".
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Aside from a few vocal spammers, I have found most of the new players (the ones that respond) to be polite. Sadly, they are also willing to accept my pity since most of the time they are on the other side.
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I still find there are a lot of the "STFU" players and the players that do truly want to learn. I got thrown in a "balanced" lobby with all noobs, i suggested some changes to 1 new player then 4 more asked for help after asking what level I was because they obvious can't see it...and once they knew I was a 45 they all were very excepting of my suggestions and got very active into asking how things worked and what ammo was best and load outs were best....the problem TIMED LOBBY!!!! it started the match with me only being able to help a few and still have TONS of questions from others that wanted help but I couldn't help them because we can't just sit in lobby anymore (seriously think they should make timed lobbies an option, not a requirement) and then since it was stacked no one wanted a rematch so we were all sent back into crew formation and all those new players that actually wanted help didn't get it and wont till they stumble upon the next high level player willing to teach them. It's very aggravating to try and help the community you love yet have the game itself work against you in doing that.
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+1 for removing timer from lobbies.
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I also think that timed lobbies are bad. If they're not going to remove them I'd be really happy to at least get 30-60 more seconds on the timer.
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I block listed probably about a dozen people today too. All for voice. Some yelling at the top of their voice or making horny possum calls. The rest, joining in, to out due the others...ahh sales...the friend of all block lists!
Whatever would we do without block lists?
(https://31.media.tumblr.com/b13302440a3af8a31b792ca0f48707eb/tumblr_nd7aeg3tWr1tkbbvfo2_r1_500.gif)
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fuck it. no one cares about what we think.
we can never play conveniently with people again and we should get over it.
play competitive only or have play-dates with friends.
fuck this game. fuck fighting for it. just go play hawken. same fucking shit. some pew pew some teamwork and it's the same ovaries-busting work to organise a good lobby so why bother.
it's any game now and i know it's hard to accept.
but oh how wonderful the new players are so pleased.
after the sale it's back to 30-300 always.
last sale we had what? 1.5k? meant nothing. so this means nothing either. just to rain all over your enthusiasm over the numbers (of what? 700?) online.
breaking news. people buy cheap games! no shit.
the only thing good about this is that some goes to charity. but none of you cared.
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Matchmaking has been out for about two weeks now.
So far the system has failed to put me into an enjoyable match EVEN ONCE. That's right. I did not enjoy a single match your system tossed me into. Many matches are still rather one sided and those matches which are not one sided ALWAYS (not a single exception) involved either quitting co-captains, or co-captains which don't communicate whatsoever.
I do not like playing Guns of Icarus anymore.
Fix your shit!
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I only use crew form and friend join now. Not because I hate balance, but because I like fun.
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Same. Having 50+ friends helps.
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Yeah all those stomp matches I had were stomps because most of the other team left. There was no players to replenish. Heck one, lowbies took a galleon and charged in with it. When they exploded after being focused down by 3 ships, they left. Heck I was just sitting back with a sniper boat so I wasn't even in close to mine them and they left.
This is what happens when you have matchmaking with no consequences. MMOs purposely put cooldowns into their LFG queues to prevent players from bouncing from match to match. They usually kick in if a player leaves within 5 mins of group start. Its reasonable to put, say a 10 min cooldown on MM if players abuse it. It forces them to stay in matches.
Either that or what you do is you have a cooldown which increases the more time players abuse it. So they maybe only get to leave 3x before they have to sit there for the full length and then after that it takes an hour for it to reset.
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Yeah all those stomp matches I had were stomps because most of the other team left. There was no players to replenish. Heck one, lowbies took a galleon and charged in with it. When they exploded after being focused down by 3 ships, they left. Heck I was just sitting back with a sniper boat so I wasn't even in close to mine them and they left.
This is what happens when you have matchmaking with no consequences. MMOs purposely put cooldowns into their LFG queues to prevent players from bouncing from match to match. They usually kick in if a player leaves within 5 mins of group start. Its reasonable to put, say a 10 min cooldown on MM if players abuse it. It forces them to stay in matches.
Either that or what you do is you have a cooldown which increases the more time players abuse it. So they maybe only get to leave 3x before they have to sit there for the full length and then after that it takes an hour for it to reset.
So how exactly would this deter good ol' fashioned turn-off-computer ragequits?
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Matchmaking has been out for about two weeks now.
So far the system has failed to put me into an enjoyable match EVEN ONCE. That's right. I did not enjoy a single match your system tossed me into. Many matches are still rather one sided and those matches which are not one sided ALWAYS (not a single exception) involved either quitting co-captains, or co-captains which don't communicate whatsoever.
I do not like playing Guns of Icarus anymore.
Fix your shit!
This. Have my salute, Sir.
As sparklefish now I only use custom match option because matchmaking is no fun. Also situations where we have a great discussion in the lobby and timer just ends make me a sad panda :<
This is what happens when you have matchmaking with no consequences. MMOs purposely put cooldowns into their LFG queues to prevent players from bouncing from match to match. They usually kick in if a player leaves within 5 mins of group start. Its reasonable to put, say a 10 min cooldown on MM if players abuse it. It forces them to stay in matches.
Either that or what you do is you have a cooldown which increases the more time players abuse it. So they maybe only get to leave 3x before they have to sit there for the full length and then after that it takes an hour for it to reset.
Well, we would surely love to see something like this but for now it's not going to happen. Muse almost desperately needs new players, so we have to be caring about noobs untill player count will naturally drop from sale 900-ish to regular 200-300ish. Noobs would be like "Oh, this game make muh wait, dis stupeed, gunn' play some CoD, hurr durr" or sth like that :D
Luckily Muse agreed that making matches with clan members visible in custom matches is a good idea. So maybe next patch/hotfix we'll see some improvement, at least with matchmaking workarounds.
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Matchmaking has been out for about two weeks now.
So far the system has failed to put me into an enjoyable match EVEN ONCE. That's right. I did not enjoy a single match your system tossed me into. Many matches are still rather one sided and those matches which are not one sided ALWAYS (not a single exception) involved either quitting co-captains, or co-captains which don't communicate whatsoever.
I do not like playing Guns of Icarus anymore.
Fix your shit!
fuck it. no one cares about what we think.
we can never play conveniently with people again and we should get over it.
play competitive only or have play-dates with friends.
fuck this game. fuck fighting for it. just go play hawken. same fucking shit. some pew pew some teamwork and it's the same ovaries-busting work to organise a good lobby so why bother.
it's any game now and i know it's hard to accept.
but oh how wonderful the new players are so pleased.
after the sale it's back to 30-300 always.
last sale we had what? 1.5k? meant nothing. so this means nothing either. just to rain all over your enthusiasm over the numbers (of what? 700?) online.
breaking news. people buy cheap games! no shit.
the only thing good about this is that some goes to charity. but none of you cared.
Both these posts mirror how I feel and the same conclusions I have made. The game is super frustrating to play as a pilot, if I want to set up a pick up crew. And when I've tried solo queuing my gunner, the majority of times my pilot quits mid game after I've begged for arcs. Matchmaking was supposed to create lobbies of equal skill levels, but all they've done is create balanced mixed teams, so each side has equally frustrated vets. After a few days of this I concluded it's just not fun. If I wasn't in a clan, I wouldn't play this game, and if I were new, I would never stick with it. I have resolved to now only play competitively and when I can create a full pre-made clan team. Matchmaking has done a good number on any passion I have for this game. I am concerned that in the long run this will have killed this game.
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Yeah all those stomp matches I had were stomps because most of the other team left. There was no players to replenish. Heck one, lowbies took a galleon and charged in with it. When they exploded after being focused down by 3 ships, they left. Heck I was just sitting back with a sniper boat so I wasn't even in close to mine them and they left.
This is what happens when you have matchmaking with no consequences. MMOs purposely put cooldowns into their LFG queues to prevent players from bouncing from match to match. They usually kick in if a player leaves within 5 mins of group start. Its reasonable to put, say a 10 min cooldown on MM if players abuse it. It forces them to stay in matches.
Either that or what you do is you have a cooldown which increases the more time players abuse it. So they maybe only get to leave 3x before they have to sit there for the full length and then after that it takes an hour for it to reset.
So how exactly would this deter good ol' fashioned turn-off-computer ragequits?
It won't, it just makes sure they can't do it over and over to multiple people. That is where rage quitters get off. They rage quit a match because they can easily move to another more easier match with no consequences. Remove that ability and the rage quitter has to sit there waiting. They don't like that. Often times they have little to no patience. They're more than willing to put up with a battle than they would to sit waiting for a timer to tick down. Even if it may be faster to quit and sit in a timer, the need for instant gratification won't allow them to see that.
Problem comes in with how do you treat disconnects/etc? The reconnect timer is helpful but you are bound to have some caught by the system. Unless of course, you allow reconnects, or as said, you limit the rage quit timer to 5 mins. Meaning they have to sit in the match for at least 5 mins before they can rage quit without a timer. Course you could increase that time if it ended up being too little or too much.
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It won't, it just makes sure they can't do it over and over to multiple people. That is where rage quitters get off. They rage quit a match because they can easily move to another more easier match with no consequences. Remove that ability and the rage quitter has to sit there waiting. They don't like that. Often times they have little to no patience. They're more than willing to put up with a battle than they would to sit waiting for a timer to tick down. Even if it may be faster to quit and sit in a timer, the need for instant gratification won't allow them to see that.
Personally I think you could also create an incentive to stay in your match by putting a time restriction on when you can join a new game after quitting a game. Even if you logged out, closed the program, or outright turned off your computer you would still not be able to join a new match after logging in again until the time penalty is up.
Is that what you meant in your previous post? I was a bit unsure at what you meant. I don't play those kinds of MMO's and I'm not sure what you mean by time limits before being able to leave.
Problem comes in with how do you treat disconnects/etc? The reconnect timer is helpful but you are bound to have some caught by the system. Unless of course, you allow reconnects, or as said, you limit the rage quit timer to 5 mins. Meaning they have to sit in the match for at least 5 mins before they can rage quit without a timer. Course you could increase that time if it ended up being too little or too much.
With the idea I mentioned above, the grace rejoin time seems to be fine as you'll be simply going right back to the game you were in instead of joining a new one. If the connection problem persists past the grace rejoin time, waiting to join a game is not that big a deal. The rejoin time is a few minutes at the highest I've seen and waiting a few more before being able to join another game is not that big a deal for someone who just wants to play and will stay in a game. This is dependent on the time penalty of course but if you're dc'd for that long you're probably not going to come back right at the second the rejoin time limits is up.
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I assume the reason why we keep getting put with ppl <lvl 10 (except from their obvious abundance) is that MM considers a lvl 8 player with 70% win ratio to be as capable as a lvl 40 with the same win/loss. Thing is, a game's outcome depends more on experience rather than actual skill, and it's only after a significant amount of games that actual skill becomes discernible and matters more than playtime. A quick solution, as others have suggested, would be to have people below a certain average level be put into a different matchmaking pool, and lift this restriction only in cases of low population.
I'm pretty sure that with time, if proper tweaks are made to the MM system (restrictions it places, rating deviation it allows, factors it includes when calculating rating etc), and as each players' rating stabilizes, average lobby quality will improve. Eric has, after all, already stated that the future goal would be to allow matching players only from the same 'leagues' or skill tiers. This combined with a stricter matchmaker has to quarantee some lobby balance and quality, or at least so I hope.
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Oh, this game make muh wait, dis stupeed, gunn' play some CoD, hurr durr
I for one do not want this kind of player to continue playing - these people have already bought the game and paid money to muse so IMHO its fine if they go back to play some CoD and never return.
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I assume the reason why we keep getting put with ppl <lvl 10 (except from their obvious abundance) is that MM considers a lvl 8 player with 70% win ratio to be as capable as a lvl 40 with the same win/loss. Thing is, a game's outcome depends more on experience rather than actual skill, and it's only after a significant amount of games that actual skill becomes discernible and matters more than playtime. A quick solution, as others have suggested, would be to have people below a certain average level be put into a different matchmaking pool, and lift this restriction only in cases of low population.
I'm pretty sure that with time, if proper tweaks are made to the MM system (restrictions it places, rating deviation it allows, factors it includes when calculating rating etc), and as each players' rating stabilizes, average lobby quality will improve. Eric has, after all, already stated that the future goal would be to allow matching players only from the same 'leagues' or skill tiers. This combined with a stricter matchmaker has to quarantee some lobby balance and quality, or at least so I hope.
Do you really think we have enough players to split the matchmaking pool? We barely have enough to run it as is - during peak time after a sale...
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Herein lies the main issue with matchmaker in my opinion. Currently, with the population boon of a steam sale, games are starting quickly, albeit poor quality games. Once the population dies down, as it inevitably will, I don't see how matchmaker can possibly do what it is intended to do. If it cannot create a fun game for everyone right now with 700+ people in the pool to pull from, then how can it possibly work when there are 70 in the pool?
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I honestly think we do. As I keep saying, we have enough high skill/level players that are simply always split between too many different running games instead of being pulled together..
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The largest issue with MM (other than it does not work) is that you are out of the pool once you are in a lobby. If the matchmaker included EVERYONE in the pool, except for those in global lobby and in a match, it would be able to recommend better lobbies. If it did, you would get a popup like:
"We have detected a lobby better balanced for your skills. Would you like to join?" [Yes/No]
It would then show you what your position in the new lobby would be without actually putting you there, and ask if you want to stay or go back.
Problem of diluted highly-skilled players in not fun matches solved.
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Bad idea. It would make the whole system much more complicated and not optimised, therefore - hella much slower.
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As opposed to now? I don't think you know anything about dynamic sorting systems, sir.
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...yes, I know sorta (pun intended) about that. ^^
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The largest issue with MM (other than it does not work) is that you are out of the pool once you are in a lobby. If the matchmaker included EVERYONE in the pool, except for those in global lobby and in a match, it would be able to recommend better lobbies. If it did, you would get a popup like:
"We have detected a lobby better balanced for your skills. Would you like to join?" [Yes/No]
It would then show you what your position in the new lobby would be without actually putting you there, and ask if you want to stay or go back.
Problem of diluted highly-skilled players in not fun matches solved.
This would be nice. With a match list you could hop around until you found a lobby with good population of higher-levels which would generally stick together. Since we don't have that luxury now, it's been slow getting a good group into a lobby, and seems to only be achieved with us crew-forming and friend-joining since the matchmaker seems to have no effing clue how to match us up appropriately. I hope for the love of god they don't take those options away from us.
I'd even be fine being dropped into spectate in a full/running match that the matchmaker thinks I'd be a better fit in based on the players actually being around my skill bracket. It's what I do manually anyhow waiting for a slot to open up.
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MM is a nightmare for setting up matches for events.
You have to get everyone to add one person to join on then get them to join on them. When setting up multiple matches, you have to have multiple people. So your bumbling screen names + passwords and hoping people don't have trouble navigating the menus. Its the epitome of...before just one or two steps to make it happen...now, 4-5 steps. Adding to that all the problems that potentially crop up on top of that.
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Agree. Before the server died last night, we were wondering how the hell we were going to set op the 3v3 VIP thing with 800 players (99.9% of them not knowing what our VIP thing is) with only a little time to explain the rules.
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I can't say for certain that this is how the match making system works, but I suspect it adds the ranking of all players on a ship and tries to make all ships in a lobby equal in that same. Vets like me get put with level 1's so that the ship's total ranking is about equal to the other ships in the area. This system works for games like Counterstrike but is fundamentally flawed for a game like Guns of Icarus.
In counterstrike one expert player can carry a team to victory by virtue of pure skill. In Guns of Icarus one person's skill can not carry a team to victory. An expert captain with a crappy crew won't be able to do much nor will an expert engineer/gunner be able to carry a novice captain to victory. Where as a competent pilot and one competent crew member will be able to accomplish far more.
Thus I have a suggestion for revising the match making system, and it is called multiplication. To determine the rank of a ship multiply the captain's rank by the average rank of the crew. This will properly weight the captain's importance while also taking into account that he can't function without a responsive crew. It will also put the vets who are getting sick and tired of being match with all novices all the time onto ships that are slightly more functional.
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Personally I feel like much of the problem is from trying to retain some features from what the lobbies used to be like while at the same time moving ahead with matchmaking. Some features just don't work together. On its own a change could be an improvement but in conjuction with another change it seems to cause more problems than fix.
In my opinion, if players could set options like whether a lobby should be timed or not, whether a match will be counted towards matchmaking mmr and not be available to the matchmaking queue, and have access to (and see) all lobby rooms which does not accept players from the matchmaking queue then there would be more freedom for players to set map options in general. With improved flexibility and options players could be less angrier at the rigid matchmaking system and choose to go a non-matchmaking room instead. An experienced player could invite a group of new players to a room that is not part of matchmaking to teach without having to worry about timers, mmr, and problems with matchmaking itself.
Changes are good on paper but the way it has been first implemented is causing many other, perhaps unintended, issues.
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Nothing has really changed in my guns of icarus experience. I just avoid the matchmaking like i avoided quickjoin. And calmly deal with the people that do use it.
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Nothing has really changed in my guns of icarus experience. I just avoid the matchmaking like i avoided quickjoin. And calmly deal with the people that do use it.
Haha this is pretty much where I stand - I'm just taking some enjoyment poking fun at its failures which I predicted long in advance ^^
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If I am looking for a fun match, I join on friends. If I am looking for funny screenshots (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,5019.0.html), I use matchmaking.
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MM is a nightmare for setting up matches for events.
You have to get everyone to add one person to join on then get them to join on them. When setting up multiple matches, you have to have multiple people. So your bumbling screen names + passwords and hoping people don't have trouble navigating the menus. Its the epitome of...before just one or two steps to make it happen...now, 4-5 steps. Adding to that all the problems that potentially crop up on top of that.
yeah it'd be really nice if crew form had a [custom match] option, so the leader of the crew form can take the whole crew into a match they create or one of their friend's matches/a tourney match - if pw protected, the pw goes through for all crew form.
and I also think one crew form should be able to join into another crew form and combine.
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Do you really think we have enough players to split the matchmaking pool? We barely have enough to run it as is - during peak time after a sale...
I saw a post by Keyvais In the guns steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/app/209080/discussions/0/613940477936300679/?tscn=1415038511
Hey Cat Mage,
What level are you in-game?
Right now we're seeing at lower levels the flamethrower is overpowered and at higher levels it's a bit weak. We're about to have a hotfix go up to split the high and low levels a bit more so hopefully you should see quite a few less.
Just let me know though.
Thanks!
I was/am one that thinks that splitting the pool will help with the stacked lobbies...pretty sure it will...but Geo raises a very good point. Once the new player surge leaves after the sale will we have enough players to have split pools? Also, another question that came to mind was will Veterans still be able to be in low level lobbies for reasons of teaching? This is such a hard problem to have the right fix for.
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Also, another question that came to mind was will Veterans still be able to be in low level lobbies for reasons of teaching? This is such a hard problem to have the right fix for.
We have Teacher and CA/mod status for that, I think.
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yeah it'd be really nice if crew form had a [custom match] option, so the leader of the crew form can take the whole crew into a match they create or one of their friend's matches/a tourney match - if pw protected, the pw goes through for all crew form.
and I also think one crew form should be able to join into another crew form and combine.
That would be a nice feature
We have Teacher and CA/mod status for that, I think.
Yes there is (which I keep forgetting to ask for the teacher one), BUT that means every high level player that just wants to help out random low levels would have to apply for one of those status. I guess not a huge problem but it is much easier to teach 1 low level on a ship with 3 other players knowing what they are doing opposed to 3 low levels with 1 high level teaching. AND LOBBIES ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH TO TEACH IN!!!!!!
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AND LOBBIES ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH TO TEACH IN!!!!!!
Yesterday during a countdown my teammate switched to a triple flak squid. I started trying to explain damage types and why it was an ineffective build, but then the match started. Every person on the ship ragequit after their first death.
Matchmaking and enforced lobby timers hard at work. Such balance.
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AND LOBBIES ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH TO TEACH IN!!!!!!
Yesterday during a countdown my teammate switched to a triple flak squid. I started trying to explain damage types and why it was an ineffective build, but then the match started. Every person on the ship ragequit after their first death.
Matchmaking and enforced lobby timers hard at work. Such balance.
You can only imagine what it's like when this happened every match in some way. You start to hate... playing in such lobbies.
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Crew formation doesn't seem to generate balanced matches with matchmaking, which is funny because I thought they'd said that it would work well for matchmaking?
Last night I did crew formation with a bunch of StarBubbles and a few DJs. We started with around 10 players, most of whose levels were 30 or above, and after every match, we went back to crew formation along with whatever stray players we picked up, and eventually ended up queueing with 15-16 players.
Results:
- matchmaking fired very quickly, putting us in 3v3s to start and later 4v4s as our formation got bigger
- opposition was almost uniformly novice players (i.e. none of a player's classes were above level 12). There were definitely several 3v3s that were all-novice opposition, and some of the 4v4s were against 14 or 15 novices out of 16 opponents.
- all of the matches were huge blowouts, until latenight attrition reduced our core group to only 6 players in a 4v4, when we still won pretty handily
I can understand getting lopsided matches if there aren't many people in the queue and the matchmaker just has to throw us together with whoever's around, but the games were firing VERY quickly, and the matches were very lopsided. Was it really possible there were zero non-novice players in the queue at the time? Or that our group's collective rating was comparable to that of a brand new player?
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Can confirm my experiences are the same as CitizenFry's.
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I believe switching classes in game would alleviate a lot of problems with matchmaking and when persons leave. Switching should have a short penalty to respawn so that people don't try to switch classes to get lower overall cool-downs if that makes sense.
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Should I feel bad that I haven't used match making yet? I find it so much better to create my own lobby, invite a few friends and than hit the recruit from queue button. It also gives us more time to play our favorite game. Lobbies of Icarus.
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Should I feel bad that I haven't used match making yet? I find it so much better to create my own lobby, invite a few friends and than hit the recruit from queue button. It also gives us more time to play our favorite game. Lobbies of Icarus.
When I get fed up with match making this is what I do. And then we play 3 matches and have to redo the lobby all over again.
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Before matchmaking:
(https://33.media.tumblr.com/3a5f405e938d52170ebb4fdad0c25149/tumblr_nec8g3QjUQ1rydwbvo3_500.gif)
After matchmaking:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3L_o1LcDSA8/VEsreGez9eI/AAAAAAAAGIs/3Yegmyf6bs4/w640-h400-p-k/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-10-24%2Bat%2B9.45.33%2BPM.png)
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That last picture, you are the ONE DUDE on your team who knows how to play. Save yourself while you can!