Goals and Ramifications of Matchmaking

[Tropo]

so i have just been in the dev app and this is testing and match making related not for sake of complaining i have oready shown my concern

frist thing i have notices is 4, 6 or 8 people dosen't get a match started
-how this will effect me some times in the peck time i play at and other australians there are only 40 people online with two matchs running that means the remaining people may have to wait up to 2 hours till the euro people start coming online
- idea lower the frest hold to 4 captains to start a match

second  not able to join running matchs
-this effects me massively as i found out today when i dc and didn't make it back in by the rusume time aloud
-idea increase that time being that no one esle can take your spot

3rd thing was ui which needs some more work maybe ?
-make matching or what eva should be  called join queue

also noticed that when i did have a match that ground sound
and all the ships where red weird bug


also when i had everyone together other people judge your system and made me think of more things i see as a problem or concern

here it is your rating system never going to be perfect and if its only judge off of 4 or 5 matches it could be really bad
because any match can swing any way for any reason
-main reason you are removing the match list and stuff is because it will mess with your match making system
-idea why don't you have a match list area with unranked game like every other game with match making

muse hold me tight im scared for the future of my now favorite game of all time

[ramjamslam]

...
Problems to Solve and Goals of Matchmaking:
...
- Ease of finding a match
- Information overload (related to above)
- Time for match to Ready Up
- Teams being stacked
- Reduce performance overhead
...

Of those points above, the matchmaking system does look like information overload to me: there is a ton of buttons and switches, then you have to enter/exit queues to change it.  How about three buttons: e.g. "Join Now as Engineer" "Queue Now as Gunner" and "Join Now as Pilot" for a situation where there are available pilot and engineer slots, but no Gunner slots.  Or at least those three buttons for the 'I don't care just let me play' players, then an advanced screen, expand section or whatever with the information overload.

frist thing i have notices is 4, 6 or 8 people dosen't get a match started
-how this will effect me some times in the peck time i play at and other australians there are only 40 people online with two matchs running that means the remaining people may have to wait up to 2 hours till the euro people start coming online
- idea lower the frest hold to 4 captains to start a match

second  not able to join running matchs
-this effects me massively as i found out today when i dc and didn't make it back in by the rusume time aloud
-idea increase that time being that no one esle can take your spot

No matches were found when we were testing (around 6 people) in matchmaking even when we were all pilot class.  As Tropo stated, this could be a problem for us in the off peak hours (8pm my time is about 5am or 6am EST I think) as sometimes there is only 1-3 active matches going.  A lot of times we will get a match started with only pilots and the game will fill up with crew as we play the next few matches.  It's a bit of a worry if matchmaking doesn't work unless there are 16 people (of the right classess) to start a match.

Also during these off peak times there can be no novice matches going at all, so under this system there might be 8 people waiting in non novice matchmaking and some people waiting in novice matchmaking and they will never see each other and a match will never start.  It seems that the matchmaking filters (e.g. novice and server location) could be a problem in off peak times and during off peak times for your preferred server location.

I hope what we experienced with 4 pilots in matchmaking and no match starting was just a bug, or at least the bug is that for some of the filters there is no "Any/I don't care" option.

Edit: so it looks like I can write walls of text too.  Also, I felt the need to comment since they are obviously naming the new matchmaking system after me

[Velvet]

yeah, I'm not sure what the role of the Novice filter is now that matchmaking is being added. I don't see where it will benefit the system and ramjamslam has pointed out the definite negative effect.

[Javrak]

The most disconcerting issue I see is the inability to join a custom game in progress. A lot of times I hop on, and see what friends are on, if they are currently playing I will try and fill a role in that match, just to hang out and get something going afterwards, sometimes even just spectate(which is also a good way to see how other pilots fly and pickup some pro-tips). After reading the entirety of these postings I see that the idea is to get rid of Match List for performance reasons, I'm not happy about it, but I understand that this is what puts food on the table for Muse and they have crunched numbers to come out with a positive in player retention.

However, both losing Match List and the ability to join custom matches midgame in one shot is a tough pill to swallow. As Tropo stated, we had 6 people in the queue, 4 pilots and 2 engineers, in non-peak hours these people would have to start a custom match in order to play, yet there isn't a social system in place to facilitate this properly, and the match making system doesn't facilitate this either(at least not currently). I understand that this is an outlier situation when considering statistics, but it will still end up being a negative impact when people must sit in the queue for extended periods of time just to fight for the small number of slots available during non-peak hours.
 

[N-Sunderland]

If it does in fact end up being the case that players can't join matches in progress, wouldn't it be best to remove the rejoin timer and let the player who's dropped rejoin at any point? The whole purpose (as far as I can tell) of the current rejoin timer is to allow somebody else to replace the DCed crew member after they've been gone too long. So if replacements can't happen, why not have an infinite rejoin timer?

[RearAdmiralZill]

Because if someone ragequits, they aren't going to come back.

[N-Sunderland]

Because if someone ragequits, they aren't going to come back.

But if their computer crashes and they only manage to get back after the timer runs out...

[Mattilald Anguisad]

I for one actualy welcome the adittion of ranked play. We speend way too often having to practice for competitive event's against pugs. It's not fun for them and it's no good for us, becouse we learn nothing, and we all feel guilty for effectively pug stomping.

[Captain Smollett]

I may have missed it in the thread somewhere, but is there any reason why people won't be allowed to use their friends list to join a match in progress?

[Tropo]

thanks javrak you bring up another point

which is if a custom lobby is made if should fill it in down peek or low currency from the waiting player pool

[Byron Cavendish]

Okay, I had a sit and I thought about a lot of this. I'm really willing to ignore my trepidations, and see the good in this, largely due to Howard's convictions. However, going back, this quote really bothered me.

RE: pre-match lobby

Don't fret.  You will be able to see your enemy's loadouts.  However, it will be organized and ordered.  We're looking into real life sports like basketball's tip offs and American football's coin tosses for inspiration.  Teams will get opportunities to examine the opposing team's loadout and respond to it accordingly.  Depending on the coin toss, one team will get the final customization before the match will start.  It'll be much more like chess and even increase the amount of strategic play in pre-match lobbies instead of the mad dash to be the last one to get the surprise customization.  Again, we will test this thoroughly when we have something to work with.  This is also very rough design wise so we're open to suggestions on it.  We'll think about changing class during this time too.

This seems really unnecessary, and quite possibly frustrating. If there is an issue of countering builds (which I don't think there is, at any skill level) simply turn off the ability to look at opposing team's ships and loadouts. But why this? What purpose or issue does it solve without creating more issues? "Surprise customization"? When has this ever been an issue? Certainly not at the competitive level, and I've never heard of medium to low level players exploiting that at all.

At the casual level, In the time waiting to start a game, my build and crew loadouts can change quite a few times. At the casual level, if I am playing with people I have never met, and that are coming and going from matches, I'd have to wait right before the game begins to give them loadouts. I also have to find out what they already know and are comfortable with. This seems very punishing for no particular reason.

It's these kind of ideas that frustrate me, because there are so many areas and opportunities for expansion in the game, and time and resources are wasted on stuff like this. I mean, who comes up with this? The battle goes on in game, I really don't want to have to play a game of chess with builds in the lobby. I don't care what the opposition brings, but don't limit choices.

Oh and for the LOVE OF GOD, use the "save as" feature that have been on computers since the dawn of time to save a client version before rolling this out in case it flops. The biggest facepalm moment was right after the spawn system rollout, when everyone wanted the old system back and Eric said nope we cant, we didn't save it or we can't roll it back, something like that.

[Dev Bubbles]

@tropo, we're NOT ready for you to start testing yet!!  And we do have contingencies for low pop, so you won't be stuck playing with no one.  The contingencies you won't see in dev app testing yet, but we're accounting for that. 

See!  I told you we don't do things in haste, hahaha.  Not even ready for you to start testing yet.  There are I think about 1200 requests asking for dev app keys, so we have to get everyone coordinated first, which should be today and tomorrow.  Then we need to set up the test session times. 

You're welcome to poke around, but we will not be as ready today as we will be back 1/2 of this week. 

So do not worry just yet.  If you need someone to hold you tight.  I will personally fly to Australia darn it! 
(Ok, there might be a chance for me to not keep that promise, but I would love to visit Australia though.)

[awkm]

More up to date information here....


Disclaimer:

If I say something should be happening and clearly is not, please let me know.  This is because these features should work before we officially test.  Matchmaking is not in a fully testable state right now and we're not ready to test all the use cases.

Futhermore, there are some use cases that we are explicitly not testing for in this current phase of matchmaking.

Keyvias will be posting an announcement soon regarding when testing will officially start.




RE: 3 engineer while queuring solo

For now, you can change all this after matchmaking puts you in a pre-match lobby.  Whether or not we want to be strict and lock this in is TBD.  We'll test and see how well this goes.  We just don't want users to end up in a situation with 4 gunners.  This will likely only be locked for Novice, so no worries there so far.

RE: Engineer Captain

Same as above.  You can change in pre-match lobby.

RE: How easy crew loadouts

You can chat and voice chat.  For now, we will be implementing a global countdown of 90 seconds.  You can ready up before then and start faster.  Each team will get one 30 second Add Time button for a total of 60 seconds added if both teams as for it, so 2 minutes max in pre-match lobby to change your class, ship, and loadouts.

RE: Match starts before ready

Not much we can do there but we'll be measuring how long it takes for matches to start and tuning the default starting value from the current 90s.

RE: Skill level/rating

Your account will have one rating regardless of classes.  It is purely based on your wins/losses.  If there is a huge problem with this, we can look to split it up.  However, our assumption is that if you're high enough level at any class then you'll probably be playing better in your bad clas than a Novice or average player.

RE: Ratings based on personal skill or team average?

Ultimately, we'd like points awarded to be scaled appropriately to your personal rating.  For now, we're taking a simplified approach to get things started.

RE: Dropping mid-match

For now, we won't penalize your rating if you drop mid-match.  However, we will allow you to Resume the match you dropped out of.  If you fail to resume then you your priority in queue will drop as a punishment for a short duration of time like for your next queue in matchmaking.

RE: Join on players

Yes, for now you can join on your friends in both matchmaking and custom games.  We'll be evaluating the efficacy of it as we go along.  This includes in pre-match lobby and mid-match.  Again, we'll have to look at this carefully.  The ratings systems will distribute points accordingly to new members in the match.

RE: Low population

We are not testing for low population right now.  If there isn't enough players for a full match, matchmaking will currently fail.  We will be thinking of low population contingencies but are strictly not testing it for now.

RE: Ratings measurement and creation

Please read more about ELO/Glicko rating systems.  These systems are used in many sports and eSports worldwide.  Your ratings is an accmulation of all your historic matches, not just the last 4-5 matches (it will just take 4-5 matches to generate an accurate and 'reliable' rating).  There are other variables to measure the reliability and variance of your rating as well.  We take all that into account when pairing you up with other players. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

We are using Glicko 2.  You can even download the formulas that we will be basing ours off of from the Glicko 2 website to get a better understanding of how this works if you are curiously inclined.

RE: Save-as

There are a lot of things related to that issue that can make things difficult to roll back from things getting commited without adequete testing and people responsible for systems leaving the company.  Some of these things are beyond our control but I take full responsibility.  It often comes down to labor priorities and we chose to handle the situation with more design damage control than to completely roll it back.  This is why we're testing out matchmaking piece by piece, step by step, to ensure that these kinds of things don't happen.  Knee-jerk reactions to spawn changes were expected and dealt with to the best of efforts.  However, knee-jerk reactions to an idea stated clearly as an idea discourages our efforts for transparency, which is something many people have asked for.




When posting your comments.  Please consider your tone and note that we are always open to ideas.  In return, we ask that you're also open to ideas that we present to you. 

Matchmaking is taking place in phases.  Not all features and functions are in place.  Things will slowly be tested over the course of the next few months.

[Byron Cavendish]

I completely understand the logic behind phased testing of a concept from a design standpoint. However, it is hard for us the consumer, to fully commit a I like or dislike feeling to the concept because of that. If matchmaking were a cake, and you told me "Okay, I'm making you a cake", I'd ask "okay, what kind of cake"? And you tell me "I can't tell you yet, but first it will have a sponge-y, bread like inner bit". Okay, I like that, but I still don't know what else will be on it, so how can I say I will like it? What if you put lemon frosting on it? I hate lemon frosting. Until I can fully see and taste the cake, I can't just get behind the bread.

[awkm]

We're aiming to give you just the cake first.  Then maybe a bit of cake with some frosting.  Maybe some of the frosting on its own.  Then we'll make adjustments to the cake.  Then the frosting.  And repeat until your arteries explode.