Master-Nala Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20745504371#post-3 The full post is behind the spoiler. One of the most interesting and insightful things is the psychology that people bring to the game. Kaplan states right out that most people really expect to win all the time and aren't honest about how unlikely that is. It's a great read and I think if people seriously consider it, they might feel a bit more gracious towards the devs here. Great post, ExcaliburZ. Allow me to share some of my personal thoughts on matchmaking... We’ve been following all of the discussion around matchmaking. When topics get discussed in the community (and often among game developers) we tend to talk about things in very black/white or right/wrong terms. But most important decisions you make as a game developer are difficult trade-off decisions with no perfect answer. The goal of the matchmaking is to make it so that you as a player do not have to find 11 other people to play with. You can click a Play button, and the system finds other players for you. That’s the basics. The reality is, the matchmaker is extremely complex in what it is trying to do. It does way more than I am going to mention in this post so while I am going to offer some information here, I am leaving some things out (not all intentionally – it’s just a really complex system). At a most basic level, the matchmaker is trying to put you with 11 other people. But it doesn’t just randomly select 11 people. It takes into account a number of factors (more than I am going to list and not necessarily prioritized). The first factor is time. The matchmaker will try to find you match quickly and not force you to wait too long. A very common thing that happens is that a player will become dissatisfied with a match and say “I don’t care how long you make me wait. I’d rather wait 20 minutes and have a good match than get matchmade into a match like you just put me into.” What we’ve seen is that when the time crosses a certain threshold, players begin to complain about it taking too long to find a match. It sounds good… waiting for that perfect match. But when the reality of waiting too long comes down on most people, they end up vocalizing their discontent on the forums. Also, there is an unrealistic expectation that if a player waits longer for a match, the “better” the match will be. The concept of “better” when it comes to matchmaking is a really hard one to define. If I were to summarize match results into 5 broad buckets it would be these: 1. My team won. We beat the other team by a long shot. 2. My team barely won. 3. My team barely lost. 4. My team lost. We lost by a long shot. It wasn’t even close 5. It was a broken match somehow. Maybe someone disconnected, was screwing around or we played with fewer than 12 people. (of course there are more cases than this – I am overly simplifying here) Most players will say that they want a match to be either type 2 or type 3 as I described above. Those sound even. Barely win or barely lose. But I believe when psychology comes into play, most players actually expect type 1 or type 2 to be the result. Even an amazingly close type 3 match can turn into a highly negative experience for a lot of players. And if you keep “barely losing” it’s not a very fun night. Winning is fun and good. Losing is less fun than winning. So waiting a really long time to lose by a long shot is obviously not good. But waiting a really long time to barely lose is also a negative experience. And if we assume that your chances of winning are 50%, that means that even waiting a really long time for a “better” match means that you’re going to wait a really long time to probably lose half the time… If your expectation was that you were going to wait a really long time for an awesome match where you either 1) Won by a long shot or 2) Barely won… but still won nonetheless, your expectations for what the system can or should do are in the wrong place. We do not generate bots to take losses so you can win more than 50% of the time. Those are real people losing on the other end of every loss you take. A second factor we take into account is ping. We’re matchmaking people all over the world and we want to match people to the closest servers for the best play experience. In our second stress test, we had other things prioritized over ping-based matchmaking such as skill and time. For those of you who participated in that stress test, you’ll remember how terrible the game performance was on the first day as well as how “lit up” the forums were demanding that players be given an option of server choice. So now we prioritize ping for players. Some players live in challenging parts of the world when it comes to high speed data connections (I’m looking at you, Andes mountain range…) so it’s not perfect for everyone. But largely, most people get a really decent connection to our game servers. Matching players with wildly disparate pings also results in a higher frequency of undesirable side effects such as “getting shot behind walls”. Of course if you live in Houston, Texas and group with your buddy in Geneva, Switzerland, you’re now introducing uncertainty to our system that’s harder for us to deal with… but we allow it. Which brings us to the next factor that we match on: grouping. The majority of our matches are comprised of either all solo players or solo players and players grouped with one other person. However, the system does try to match groups of equal sizes together first and foremost. As the time people wait grows, we expand the search to try to find others for them to play with. This means that occasionally we will match groups with players who are not grouped or in a group size that is smaller than their own. Like I mentioned, this is exceedingly rare but can happen. And that match is only made when players have crossed a waiting threshold that we deem too long. For most group matches a group of 6 is placed against another group of 6. Groups are a big challenge in our matchmaking system. You can group with people of wildly varying skill and ping and we allow you to. It’s pretty unlikely that there is another group in the queue that exactly mirrors the unique circumstances that you have set up (pings, skills etc.). We want you to group. We feel that it’s the best way to play the game. So we try to avoid things that discourage grouping and we want to continually improve the social systems so that you’ll find it easier and easier to group with people you have chosen to play with. Playing with people you choose to play with is going to be more reliably fun than playing with people we choose for you. I once used the analogy of hanging out with people on a Saturday night. If you were to go out with five of your friends it would probably be a better time than if we tried to find 5 random people for you to go out with, no matter how smart we were in our selection process… Anyway, this leads me to matchmaking rating. This rating is the most important thing that we try to match on. Basically this rating means “how good are you?” Commonly, you’ll hear this referred to as Matchmaking Rating or MMR. MMR is derived differently in different games. Overwatch borrows a lot of knowledge from other games but also does a lot of things unique to Overwatch. As each player plays games, their matchmaking rating goes up or down depending on if they win or lose. The system is extremely complicated and there is a lot more going on here than I am going to spell out. So please don’t take this as the comprehensive guide to how MMR is calculated in Overwatch. There is definitely a lot more going on under the hood. In Overwatch, whether your MMR goes up or down is contingent on winning or losing. But there are a number of factors that determine how much that rating goes up or down. For example, what map you’re playing on and whether you were attacking or defending is factored in. We know the win rates on attack/defend on all of the maps and we normalize accordingly. Not all wins and losses are equal. We also look at your individual performance on each of the heroes you played during the match. Everyone has better and worse heroes and we have tons of data showing us what performance levels should be like on those heroes. We also look at your opponents and whether or not their matchmaking rating is higher or lower than yours. These are just a few of the things that are considered when determining how your skill should go up or down. At no point in MMR calculations do we look at your win/loss ratio and win/loss ratio is never used to determine who to match you with or against. We are not trying to drive your win/loss percentage toward a certain number (although the fact that so many people are at 50% win rates makes us extremely happy). All the system does when it comes to matching on skill is attempt to match you with people of a similar number. The system is of course deeper than this. There are penalties and handicaps added for things like not playing for a while or playing in groups of varying sizes. We also do special things for brand new players to (hopefully) keep them away from the general population. Players will often mistakenly look at player level and accuse the matchmaker of making unfair matches. One thing that I have mentioned before is that we were evaluating your skill during closed beta, open beta and the second stress test weekend. If you played in any of these (over 10 million players did), we had already determined a skill rating for you (most likely). This means that it’s not uncommon to see a level 1 matchmade against much higher level players. In most of these cases, the Level 1 is a skilled player who played during the phases I mentioned but did not immediately play at launch. There are many factors that are beyond our control that add noise to the matchmaking system. • Leavers are extremely disruptive • Players vary wildly in their skill with different heroes. We have no clue which of the 21 heroes you are going to play during a match • Groups form with wild variance in skill levels and ping. Contrary to popular belief there is not a “perfect match” for your unique snowflake group • Sometimes your little brother plays on your account • Sometimes the cat walks in front of the screen • Sometimes your wireless mouse runs out of batteries. (Why do you use a wireless mouse btw?) • Sometimes a highly skilled player buys a new copy of OW to “start fresh” on a new account • Sometimes you have internet problems • Sometimes you play drunk or tired… or both • That first game of the night… • …that last game of the night • “Life” So this brings me to some thoughts I’ve been having about Overwatch. While this whole post has been mostly my personal thoughts – this next part is “especially” my thoughts and not reflective of the team or the company’s POV. For better or for worse, we focused the design of the game on winning or losing as a team. OW is not a game where you ignore the map objectives and then look at your K/D ratio to determine how good you are. We want you to focus on winning or losing and as a result you do focus on winning or losing. We tried to make it so that losing isn’t the end of the world, but to a lot of people they expect to win far much more than they lose. I sometimes wonder if we were able to clone you 11 times and then put you in a match with and against yourself, would you be happy with the outcome? Even if you lost? Out of the 5 types of matches I described above, it is my belief that you would still experience types 1-4. Are those “stomps” still not acceptable? Because they will happen… And I believe OW is strange game in that regard. I spend a lot of time studying the matches that I am in because I am very focused on matchmaking. I’ve been in so many Control Point maps where my team got destroyed on the first point, the enemy team got destroyed on the second point and then we play the third point to a 99%/99% overtime. If you judged any of those single points on their own merits you could say you have two stomps (one in your favor, one against you) and one close match. Same players...no change in matchmaking. Or take a match that I was just in on Route 66, for example. My team was on attack and could barely push out past the train cars. Two members of our team swapped heroes and we proceeded to march the payload all the way to the end of the map practically uncontested. The match went from a stomp in one direction to a stomp in the other direction. So while it is possible for a mismatch to result in a stomp, not every stomp is a mismatch. If every time a team dominates another team it is viewed as “the matchmaker is broken”, the problem we have is with perception and expectations. Look across all pro sports. Even matches happen every night. Stomps happen every night. It’s a reality of any competitive game. Does that make being on the receiving end sting any less – probably not. We are constantly improving the matchmaker. We learn more each day. We have one of our best engineers and best designers full time dedicated to the system. Many of those “silent” patches that go out during the week are adjustments to the system. For example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. As a result, we’ve disabled the Avoid system (the UI will go away in an upcoming patch). The system was designed with the best intent. But the results were pretty disastrous. We will always be working on our matchmaking system. We’re listening to feedback, we’re playing the game a ton ourselves and we’re looking at hard data to inform our decisions. This post wasn’t my way of saying everything is fine. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts as someone who has been evaluating the system itself very closely as well as monitoring the feedback. I want to put it out there that there is a lot of room for improvement but also suggest that there are forces in play that cause some fair matches to sway lopsided due to forces out of our control. The game is as much (if not more) art than it is science. We’ll keep working to make it better! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxmob Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 (edited) It's a great read and I think if people seriously consider it, they might feel a bit more gracious towards the devs here. nope. some interesting stuff there. but I kind of went red when I "read" that they were doing all these things that BW isn't. so it's difficult to empathize with the people not doing the thing the other guys are. in any case, I think BW was traumatized by what happened to pvp pops on the origin servers (remember waiting 4 hours for 2 incomplete WZs and maybe one complete huttball eventually?). the very least they can do is role balance ala solo ranked. but hey, I'm just me. unsimpathetic customer who still seems to be buying a product that he's perpetually frustrated by. Edited June 23, 2016 by foxmob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 nope. some interesting stuff there. but I kind of went red when I "read" that they were doing all these things that BW isn't. so it's difficult to empathize with the people not doing the thing the other guys are. in any case, I think BW was traumatized by what happened to pvp pops on the origin servers (remember waiting 4 hours for 2 incomplete WZs and maybe one complete huttball eventually?). the very least they can do is role balance ala solo ranked. but hey, I'm just me. unsimpathetic customer who still seems to be buying a product that he's perpetually frustrated by. It's getting worse now.. They really need to merge the remaining servers.. For the life of me I can't understand why they are so reluctant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdrianDmitruk Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 The only thing this post did was remind me that the devs here don't even want to try. WTB MMR, instead this game literally does throw together the first 16 players it can find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savej Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 BW can't functionally do anything with matchmaking without x-server or merged servers. X-Faction may have done more if it wasn't used so conservatively and it had been implemented 1-2 years ago, but I don't think it's gonna change much with server populations as they are now and pvp interest probably at an all-time low. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyDarkkitten Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 I just want to quote this; or example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. As a result, we’ve disabled the Avoid system (the UI will go away in an upcoming patch). Right so just so we are all clear. Theres a guy out there who is super pro. Hes head shotting people and he will put you in the gyard 10/10. Now people were going wow this guy is fking me up and were queue dodging him. When someone is consistently better then you its not fun. If hes roflstomping you its not fun. Blizzards response to them all going "hey please dont make me have to be roflstomped this guy"... was to remove the option to say please don't make me have to roflstomped again by this guy. Cos thats gamer choice right? thats real matchmaking? Cos being roflstomped by the pros is what WE ALL WANT WITH OUR LIMITED FUN TIME rite? really? seriously? I want to play with people on my level. Not with guys who pwn me and /swagcamp afterwards. real matchmaking isn't removing my abilty to avoid those guys. Its not putting me in the games with them in the first place. riot do it so much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nardoo Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 I've wanted some sort of match making in regs since I started pvping Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hirchart Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 (edited) Whether you agree with the arguments within the post or not is kind of irrelevant. What I mean by this is that SWTOR devs would never communicate these kinds of arguments and considerations with the community. On the contrary, Bioware does not communicate anything with the PvP community at all. What was the last time a developer responded to a PvP thread with a highly detailed and elaborate response? (Did they ever?) The recent interview with Musco by Snave is exemplary. It was clear that Musco was not going to give any details, nor was he going to give any actual answers. Hence I stopped watching after 10 minutes. The reasons? Bioware does not care about PvP. It is an absolute minority that plays PvP, especially ranked. They make tremendous amounts of money with sleeping subs from casual players that primarily play Storyline™ and a flashpoint every once in a while. Other than that it is just Cartel Market™. Why would Bioware invest a lot of time and effort in ~5% (probably even less - nobody knows because they never communicate anything) of their player base? (Similar arguments apply for e.g. NiM content) TL;DR Do not ever expect this kind of posts from Bioware. Bioware does not care. Do expect them to read and/or respond to this thread either. Edited June 23, 2016 by Hirchart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midianlord Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 (edited) It's getting worse now.. They really need to merge the remaining servers.. For the life of me I can't understand why they are so reluctant Cartel Market: As long as people look like they're even slightly willing to buy server-transfers, then EA will continue to milk it. They will continue to do so until the cow drops dead pf dehydration, and not stop even one second sooner. Edited June 23, 2016 by midianlord Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master-Nala Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 nope. some interesting stuff there. but I kind of went red when I "read" that they were doing all these things that BW isn't. so it's difficult to empathize with the people not doing the thing the other guys are. I took a different lesson from the post. What I found interesting was that with all of Blizzard's resources that matchmaking is very hard and players will never be satisfied because they believe that they should be winning the majority of the time. Sure, our regular matches have no matchmaking and ranked is very poor. But I'm not convinced that this late in the game's life cycle they can do anything about it. I really can't get that mad that a game where PvP is only one facet of game play (instead of the whole point of the game) doesn't do matchmaking anywhere near as well as a much richer, more populated game whose whole purpose is PvP and PvP only. in any case, I think BW was traumatized by what happened to pvp pops on the origin servers (remember waiting 4 hours for 2 incomplete WZs and maybe one complete huttball eventually?). the very least they can do is role balance ala solo ranked. but hey, I'm just me. unsimpathetic customer who still seems to be buying a product that he's perpetually frustrated by. I think anyone who has been here a while recognizes that regs follow the mantra of, 'quick queues above all else'. But I think the post shows that isn't exactly a terrible goal. People don't like to wait, even if they say they would. Sure we would all probably wait an extra 5 minutes for a better game, but really that better game would likely lead most of us to a 50% win/lose rate which most people don't actually want even if they say they want a 'fair' game. I don't know what the overall answer is for this game and others. There's nothing they can do to give all players the experience they want. I guess you just have to try and piss off the least number of people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technohic Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 I just want to quote this; or example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. As a result, we’ve disabled the Avoid system (the UI will go away in an upcoming patch). Right so just so we are all clear. Theres a guy out there who is super pro. Hes head shotting people and he will put you in the gyard 10/10. Now people were going wow this guy is fking me up and were queue dodging him. When someone is consistently better then you its not fun. If hes roflstomping you its not fun. Blizzards response to them all going "hey please dont make me have to be roflstomped this guy"... was to remove the option to say please don't make me have to roflstomped again by this guy. Cos thats gamer choice right? thats real matchmaking? Cos being roflstomped by the pros is what WE ALL WANT WITH OUR LIMITED FUN TIME rite? really? seriously? I want to play with people on my level. Not with guys who pwn me and /swagcamp afterwards. real matchmaking isn't removing my abilty to avoid those guys. Its not putting me in the games with them in the first place. riot do it so much better. They took it out because matchmaking needs to be able to sort it out. People avoiding him were keeping that from happening as well as preventing the creme to rise to the top. Its still pretty early in that game to have people just assume they will not get to that level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technohic Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 I took a different lesson from the post. What I found interesting was that with all of Blizzard's resources that matchmaking is very hard and players will never be satisfied because they believe that they should be winning the majority of the time. Sure, our regular matches have no matchmaking and ranked is very poor. But I'm not convinced that this late in the game's life cycle they can do anything about it. I really can't get that mad that a game where PvP is only one facet of game play (instead of the whole point of the game) doesn't do matchmaking anywhere near as well as a much richer, more populated game whose whole purpose is PvP and PvP only. I think anyone who has been here a while recognizes that regs follow the mantra of, 'quick queues above all else'. But I think the post shows that isn't exactly a terrible goal. People don't like to wait, even if they say they would. Sure we would all probably wait an extra 5 minutes for a better game, but really that better game would likely lead most of us to a 50% win/lose rate which most people don't actually want even if they say they want a 'fair' game. I don't know what the overall answer is for this game and others. There's nothing they can do to give all players the experience they want. I guess you just have to try and piss off the least number of people. I'm sorry but just because its hard or even nearly impossible to get it right; doesn't mean you don't try to do as good as you can. This games PvP population has been dropping rapidly. I think had they done cross server and matchmaking it would have still dropped a little from the people who think they should win all the time; but not nearly as much as with how they have gone with completely frustrated individuals that goes beyond just losing 50% or more of their matches and into stale balance and metas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master-Nala Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 I'm sorry but just because its hard or even nearly impossible to get it right; doesn't mean you don't try to do as good as you can. This games PvP population has been dropping rapidly. I think had they done cross server and matchmaking it would have still dropped a little from the people who think they should win all the time; but not nearly as much as with how they have gone with completely frustrated individuals that goes beyond just losing 50% or more of their matches and into stale balance and metas. Perhaps, but then that begs the question of what is 'as good as you can.' I think from a technical and financial standpoint that isn't as clear cut. I think cross server may have helped or it could just have easily led us even quicker down the path we are on now. For example, some servers are at least somewhat faction balanced. Remove the distinction of servers and we might as well remove Pub side from the PvP game. Like I said, I don't know what the right answer is and I doubt anyone else does for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scinald Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect Most people don't actually want to get better, they just want to be told they are good or at least not be reminded they aren't as good as they think they are. So this pretty much explains most every crappy behavior you see in this (and other PvP games) including cheating, queue-syncing, team shaming, etc, etc, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansultares Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 (edited) It's getting worse now.. They really need to merge the remaining servers.. For the life of me I can't understand why they are so reluctantThey still need the extra capacity for the winter months, and for the surges associated with movie releases. Summer is the slowest time for MMO gaming, especially for casual F2P-unfriendly MMOs such as this one. Casuals generally have more to do during the summer, and the kiddies, who could salvage summer populations, avoid this game because it's the least friendly F2P model in the genre. If not for the movie releases, they probably would have shut down the game, or would be preparing to shut down the game. Edited June 23, 2016 by Ansultares Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansultares Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 Blizzards response to them all going "hey please dont make me have to be roflstomped this guy"... was to remove the option to say please don't make me have to roflstomped again by this guy.Blizzard's response is plainly written in the anecdote you convey. The guy was getting matches eventually; it took forever because so many average or above average players could avoid him; when it takes forever to get a match, the matchmaker opens up the MMR range to find more players; this guy was getting matches eventually, against extremely underskilled players. Seems like your complaint is that they didn't continue matching the highest skilled players against some of the lowest skilled players, and actually made an effort to get the highest skilled players matched against other high skill players. You'd rather spread the cancer to new players or the least skilled. That's just sad; go grab a hack program and just play SWTOR pvp instead. Also worth pointing out that they were actively avoiding him, not queue dodging him. Queue dodge means you've gotten into the pre-match lobby, and then leave to avoid someone. Sounds like they could just add this guy's name to a list, and would never even get queued with or against him. There's not even a need to queue dodge under that system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxmob Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 I took a different lesson from the post. What I found interesting was that with all of Blizzard's resources that matchmaking is very hard and players will never be satisfied because they believe that they should be winning the majority of the time. Sure, our regular matches have no matchmaking and ranked is very poor. But I'm not convinced that this late in the game's life cycle they can do anything about it. I really can't get that mad that a game where PvP is only one facet of game play (instead of the whole point of the game) doesn't do matchmaking anywhere near as well as a much richer, more populated game whose whole purpose is PvP and PvP only. you know I wasn't a pvper before swtor? it's true. weird, right? I pvp'd before, of course, but it was just an occasional aside. so...why did I start pvping so much in swotor? honestly, because I was frustrated with all of the bugs breaking boss fights in EV. every kind of bug you can imagine. and with every fix, something else in the raid broke. even the dailies were glitched. there was this mob of ratataki prisoners on belsavis that couldn't be killed but would keep you in combat until you ran to your base. then the content went on farm and I was bored to tears. so between once or twice a week raids, me and whoever was on would go play on ilum...you know...where the game stood still whenever an interesting number of players got together to fight. then I my guild(s) died and the only thing to do was pvp or keep rerolling new toons. I already had 3. didn't care to do more. chose pvp. that lasted about 3 weeks before you had to make dates just get a reg pop. the leveling experience (and cut scenes) were awesome. literally everything else in this game was released half-arsed. you say it's probably too late in the game's life to do anything about pvp. look around, man. it's too late for everything. the only "success" they've had was CM, and now there's an entire new xpac totally focused on...cut scenes that you now have to do with every single toon and every single class on either faction. now it's just a bad version of the one thing they did right the first go around. anyway. this is just a rant post at this point. I play it because it has the market cornered on SW MMORPG. and although I really like LotR, I've tried a couple times to play LotRO, and I can't get past the starting areas before I don't gaf any more and pick up the swtor toons that I do more or less by reflex than anything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlrikFassbauer Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 (edited) From the original Overwatch reply : But I believe when psychology comes into play, most players actually expect type 1 or type 2 to be the result. Wich could explain premades. Or something like that. And faction inbalance, too. Basically, what he describes, is an MMR system, I'd have used for SWTOR long ago. I'm not sure anymore about it, but It might be that I've been roughly outlining a similar MMR system myself here somewhere ... There are penalties and handicaps added for things like not playing for a while or playing in groups of varying sizes. We also do special things for brand new players to (hopefully) keep them away from the general population. Bravo. Players vary wildly in their skill with different heroes. We have no clue which of the 21 heroes you are going to play during a match One of the main problems here, I believe. For example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. Highly interesting. Edited June 23, 2016 by AlrikFassbauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kissingaiur Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 As I say again guys... come on. This can't be taken seriously in a game like this. It's like comparing apples and oranges. It will just make you all depressed because this game will never be like Overwatch. Blizzard has so much invented in their competitive scene while also having years of experience in profecting their MMR system. They also have millions of players because they spend time and effort on their games. While Blizzard is making monumental strides in the competitive scene with Overwatch, Bioware is more concerned about creating the next HK inspired equipment and down grading their PvP season rewards because they are just too "unique". If you want to play a real PvP game, play Overwatch. If you want to play for fun with a Star Wars theme play SWTOR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaeVictis Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 While Blizzard is making monumental strides in the competitive scene with Overwatch lol monumental strides. Id already cleared the path and Valve went a step further and paved it. Overwatch is a casual me-too introduction to an already established genre just like HotS is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxmob Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 If you want to play for fun with a Star Wars theme play SWTOR. I would argue that the application of a matchmaking system that fits with their balancing meta is a prerequisite for casual or competitive environments, and right now, that only (mostly) occurs in grp ranked. which is "highly competitive" and, thus, dead in this game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyDarkkitten Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 Blizzard's response is plainly written in the anecdote you convey. The guy was getting matches eventually; it took forever because so many average or above average players could avoid him; when it takes forever to get a match, the matchmaker opens up the MMR range to find more players; this guy was getting matches eventually, against extremely underskilled players. Seems like your complaint is that they didn't continue matching the highest skilled players against some of the lowest skilled players, and actually made an effort to get the highest skilled players matched against other high skill players. You'd rather spread the cancer to new players or the least skilled. That's just sad; go grab a hack program and just play SWTOR pvp instead. Also worth pointing out that they were actively avoiding him, not queue dodging him. Queue dodge means you've gotten into the pre-match lobby, and then leave to avoid someone. Sounds like they could just add this guy's name to a list, and would never even get queued with or against him. There's not even a need to queue dodge under that system. No my comment and complaint if you will is that they don't handle it the way Riot do: That guys is obviously a platinum league player. He needs matching with people at his level. They are putting him in with the golds and silvers and hes wrecking them. As they ignore him, the system is then putting him in with the bronzes and hes probably costing them customers at that point. All this can be solved by putting a league system in place that seperates out players of his skill from the common herd who hes roflstomping. Instead blizzard are removing the abilty to avoid people (which will impact people trying not to play with toxic players as well) in order to FORCE the silvers and golds to play against the plat player. I don't think this is how matchmaking should be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyDarkkitten Posted June 24, 2016 Share Posted June 24, 2016 anyway. this is just a rant post at this point. I play it because it has the market cornered on SW MMORPG. and although I really like LotR, I've tried a couple times to play LotRO, and I can't get past the starting areas before I don't gaf any more and pick up the swtor toons that I do more or less by reflex than anything else. Whats gaf? I assume thats a spelling mistake? I ask because I was thinking of trying lotro, I've never gotten round to it. I'ts probably pretty dead, but I'm getting bored and I always liked reading the books. Is the story fun? or is it wow like where nobody cares and nobody reads the quest text its just go collect 10 wolf kness then go back and collect 10 wolf tails? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technohic Posted June 24, 2016 Share Posted June 24, 2016 (edited) Whats gaf? I assume thats a spelling mistake? I ask because I was thinking of trying lotro, I've never gotten round to it. I'ts probably pretty dead, but I'm getting bored and I always liked reading the books. Is the story fun? or is it wow like where nobody cares and nobody reads the quest text its just go collect 10 wolf kness then go back and collect 10 wolf tails? Giva A Fack I've been tooling around in ESO a bit myself waiting for the next chapter (I'll be traveling for work I suppose) and waiting to play Riders of Icarus with my son when it realeases next week (also while I will be traveling. So much for early access) ESO I seem to wind up PvEing for the gear I want for PvP which is kind of a turn off, but it really is my type of PvP when it is not lagging to hell. Riders of Icarus I believe has PvP but I'm going to be playing it for large bosses with what looks like a fun taming and mount system. I mean; I can jump off a dragon I have tamed onto a bigger dragon in attempt to tame it while flying through the air? PvE is usually a boring means to an end for me but it has some things there that might draw my attention for a while. Edited June 24, 2016 by Technohic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxmob Posted June 24, 2016 Share Posted June 24, 2016 Whats gaf? I assume thats a spelling mistake? I ask because I was thinking of trying lotro, I've never gotten round to it. I'ts probably pretty dead, but I'm getting bored and I always liked reading the books. Is the story fun? or is it wow like where nobody cares and nobody reads the quest text its just go collect 10 wolf kness then go back and collect 10 wolf tails? give a frak or good as frak, depending on the context. the former in this case. I gave up before I got around level 10, iirc. so I'm not the best person to ask about the bigger picture. but I tried to make elves twice, and twice I couldn't drum up any interest in the "story" or the action. it's an older game, so it's mostly text or text bubbles not cut scenes. SWTOR really spoiled me in that respect. anyway...I'm not a good recommendation to go by b/c I haven't seen much of the game. I should warn you, though, that the Cartel Market is a tried and true aspect of free to play games, and LotRO has been free to play for quite some time -- almost as long as SWTOR has been in existence...or longer. it does still get xpac updates though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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