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Games ending early are absolutely unsatisfactory


Verain

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Games end early, and in large numbers. GSF primetime, when our team normally plays, is the most reliable time for games that don't end early, but even then it happens.

 

I spent a decent amount of the holiday weekend on alts doing ground game stuff. I spammed /who a lot. I didn't take notes. But I did notice:

 

1- In GSF chat, six times players begged /gsf to join a game or it would end. This strategy seems ok at preventing games from ending, but I saw the game end regardless one of the times anyway. Maybe those other five would have gone on without the begging. Either way, hoping that enough of the community is online and not in queue is a poor way to make this work.

 

2- Many games end without filling up. I've seen this frequently on Star Forge and Satele at any but prime time. I've seen this without recognizable names anywhere. I've seen this while sitting in strongholds, or running around the lowbie planets on alts. I've seen this on alts in GSF. I wish I'd written down percentages, but honestly, I'm SURE that Bret and others can look at metrics on this. PLEASE LOOK AT METRICS ON THIS. These numbers have to be shockingly high.

 

3- Games ending early have a really bad effect on the overall game. At some level, GSF is competing with the rest of the game for player attention: because the rest of the game gives rewards per time spent, GSF needs to as well. Games that end early reward very little anything for a pilot. Games that end early are overrewarding for someone trying to complete dailies and weeklies, and have little reward beyond that. This is a bad incentivization, especially given that the new queue generally is considered to be an improvement for the ground pvp. At the very least I'm seeing mixed reviews with some positive posts- literally no one is pleased with the plague of early ends that GSF is faced with.

 

4- If anyone decides to grief the queue for any reason- and it's a pvp game, so there's motivation- it's going to be really easy, much easier than before, as there will be less pilots available for backfill.

 

I'm at the point where I think this is actually hurting player participation. Very few things can do this, and I'm not convinced of it, but it is extremely frustrating to have a 5 minute queue, game ends, 10 minute queue, game ends. Yesterday we had a game that was 11v9 right before launch, with our team having the 11. At the last second it adds someone to our team- a good pilot with a lot of games- and now it is 12v9. If matchmaker had placed that guy on the other team, it would not have ended the game. Why was he placed on our team? Failing that, why would matchmaker allow him to enter at all? There's only one wrong answer, and it is allowing him to enter and also putting him on our team.

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It's hilarious to me how you're filling this board up with post after post about things you don't like, as if your opinion somehow has more weight than any other player and that the devs will jump for you when you tell them to.

 

Two things.

 

One is that I agree that the matchmaker has to make even numbers of teams. They have to fix that pronto. It's not the pop hitting and people not taking it. It's disproportionately filling up one team with a lot of players and the other with not enough.

 

The second is that I was logged into an alt in the Gone Sithing guild - a guild that used to be big on Starfighter. And unusually for this guild, other people were actually logged on when I was - it's a pretty dead guild now. Anyway, I mentioned to the guy that was on that the queue had popped and he said he's done forever with GSF because he hates the new matchmaker. I didn't ask for details, but I wonder how many other people out there feel the same way. I'm not entirely satisfied with what it's doing but other than the uneven team issue, how is it worse than what we had before? I don't know, but if one guy generally feels that way, perhaps there are others who feel that strongly. So it might be important to try to find out if there's a sizeable population who feels that way and if so, what they want to be different.

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It's hilarious to me how you're filling this board up with post after post about things you don't like, as if your opinion somehow has more weight than any other player and that the devs will jump for you when you tell them to.

 

Hey cool that is not why I am doing this.

 

I wanted a thread specifically about this particular issue, because I've found that the other feedback threads normally get garbaged up with completely unrelated points.

 

Anyway, I'm super glad you made such a hostile post, especially given that you agree with everything in this thread. Goodness!

 

It's not the pop hitting and people not taking it. It's disproportionately filling up one team with a lot of players and the other with not enough.

 

That is also what it looks like to me. If it was the pop hitting and people not talking it, it wouldn't so reliably fill up like 12 v 7. I've certainly seen games that start like 7v8 and eventually fill evenly to 12v12, but it's less often than I would expect. I've also seen it take a 10v12 game and add a 13th. Oops, difference of three, calling the game now. That is an older bug that has been responsible historically for 9v7 games, and that's at least actually rare. But maybe they are related. This absolutely feels like a bug. Also, I have been queuing warzones, and I never ever ever ever ever see anything like this over there. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but I think something is wrong with specifically just the GSF matchmaker for some reason.

 

Anyway, I mentioned to the guy that was on that the queue had popped and he said he's done forever with GSF because he hates the new matchmaker. I didn't ask for details, but I wonder how many other people out there feel the same way.

 

It's at least more than are on this forum and on reddit. I suspect most of them just silently assume it will get fixed, or just play another part of SWTOR.

 

I'm not entirely satisfied with what it's doing but other than the uneven team issue, how is it worse than what we had before?

 

Well, I know at least on DM, a lot of people are upset about the 12s, but that's a topic for another thread (it's the one signed by a lot of DM players). But in the case of Gone Sithing, those guys each have a billion GSF games or whatever and there may the perception or reality that it might be matchmaking them unwisely based on the assumption that tons of games is the primary metric. Again, (a) I don't know that they think this and (b) my main matchmaker thread also talks about this.

 

There's basically three points about the new matchmaker. The first is the incomplete games. The second is the 12s, and the third is the matchmaking criteria. The latter two are already filling the forum.

 

So it might be important to try to find out if there's a sizeable population who feels that way and if so, what they want to be different.

 

Well, the very first thing to resolve is the games ending too early. Everything else the community can probably adapt too, or debate, or something. The games ending in 30 seconds, like, I'm pretty sure that's not navel gazing on my part and after spamming /who for a holiday weekend with a lot of players doing a lot of things, I'm about absolutely convinced that it is a seriously unsatisfactory issue that is at least affecting both NA servers and probably to some extent DM, because the whole mode is basically a crapshoot of "will it happen" that is absolutely and totally out of the hands of the players.

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3- Games ending early have a really bad effect on the overall game. At some level, GSF is competing with the rest of the game for player attention: because the rest of the game gives rewards per time spent, GSF needs to as well. Games that end early reward very little anything for a pilot. Games that end early are overrewarding for someone trying to complete dailies and weeklies, and have little reward beyond that. This is a bad incentivization, especially given that the new queue generally is considered to be an improvement for the ground pvp. At the very least I'm seeing mixed reviews with some positive posts- literally no one is pleased with the plague of early ends that GSF is faced with.

 

True, but so do long queue waits. If there are only 25-31 people in queue and the game prioritizes 8v8 those people not selected for a match will wait longer.

 

Now, if the game could somehow track those 12v12 matches which end before they really start, and then prioritize 8v8 if that happens, that might work. It seems reasonable to infer that if a 12v12 popped, and ended early, there might have been close to 16 people who clicked "Accept."

 

I, of course, do not know what the best solution is.

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That is also what it looks like to me. If it was the pop hitting and people not talking it, it wouldn't so reliably fill up like 12 v 7. I've certainly seen games that start like 7v8 and eventually fill evenly to 12v12, but it's less often than I would expect. I've also seen it take a 10v12 game and add a 13th. Oops, difference of three, calling the game now. That is an older bug that has been responsible historically for 9v7 games, and that's at least actually rare. But maybe they are related. This absolutely feels like a bug. Also, I have been queuing warzones, and I never ever ever ever ever see anything like this over there. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but I think something is wrong with specifically just the GSF matchmaker for some reason.

 

That would appear to not be unique to GSF.

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There are not many matches on DM that end early due to lack of players on one team (at least not during those hours I play). However, it is very frequently that a game starts with 7-9 players in each team and then slowly fills up. It would be interesting to see an explanation why the matchmaker starts a 12v12 instead of 8v8 if there are around 16 people in queu but clearly less than 24.
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I'm not like hal per se, I love your posts and forum contribution, and usually agree. You are correct to bring up this important issue, permit me offer an observation:

 

What I see most evenings is:

- Successful queues with most every war completing as normal for hours in the prime-time evening. Some long queue times but mostly fair queue times.

- Then a well known, much respected team of 4 uber aces begins queueing together at a certain time of the night. Then the w/l of every war is pre-determined and people stop queueing and start dropping before games start. Many 30 second ends happen, and queue times are long.

 

I realize that match-maker as it is designed cannot split up the ubers in order to make the wars close. But I do think with that extreme exception, normally the match-maker does produce more close games. There are many games I lose that I still think a solid rally from the team could shift the battle. But I can also see why pre-determined games are not fun for the type of people who were hoping for more close matches out of the match-maker. My point is, in some cases we cannot blame the match-maker.

 

That doesn't mean I'm trying to place the blame directly on the uber premade, because I know it is fun to play with buddies, and they cannot help it that another equally skilled 4 man doesn't queue. But maybe if they try splitting into two uber 2 man teams and queueing we can see if there are less 30 second games and more wars that people feel they can contribute to the w/l outcome, meaning keeping them motivated. I would be honored to be a fill on either of those teams.

 

Now that we may soon be getting (in the roadmap) a sort of guild challenge mode, the ubers maybe could be in their 4 man group against other guilds, and split during general queueing. Just a thought which may cut down on the 30 second ends.

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I'm not like hal per se, I love your posts and forum contribution, and usually agree. You are correct to bring up this important issue, permit me offer an observation:

 

What I see most evenings is:

- Successful queues with most every war completing as normal for hours in the prime-time evening. Some long queue times but mostly fair queue times.

- Then a well known, much respected team of 4 uber aces begins queueing together at a certain time of the night. Then the w/l of every war is pre-determined and people stop queueing and start dropping before games start. Many 30 second ends happen, and queue times are long.

 

I realize that match-maker as it is designed cannot split up the ubers in order to make the wars close. But I do think with that extreme exception, normally the match-maker does produce more close games. There are many games I lose that I still think a solid rally from the team could shift the battle. But I can also see why pre-determined games are not fun for the type of people who were hoping for more close matches out of the match-maker. My point is, in some cases we cannot blame the match-maker.

 

That doesn't mean I'm trying to place the blame directly on the uber premade, because I know it is fun to play with buddies, and they cannot help it that another equally skilled 4 man doesn't queue. But maybe if they try splitting into two uber 2 man teams and queueing we can see if there are less 30 second games and more wars that people feel they can contribute to the w/l outcome, meaning keeping them motivated. I would be honored to be a fill on either of those teams.

 

Now that we may soon be getting (in the roadmap) a sort of guild challenge mode, the ubers maybe could be in their 4 man group against other guilds, and split during general queueing. Just a thought which may cut down on the 30 second ends.

 

I was actually worried about what you mentioned here as well. That the reason the games were ending after 30 seconds was because people were dropping from seeing our premade.

 

So before Verain made this post we made sure that wasn't the reason we were seeing it this much. We did this by solo queue ing on alts.

 

The results were exactly the same, many games are ending 30 seconds after the start of games because the matchmaker isn't filling out one side.

 

Also Stellar LOTS of the games that end 30 seconds after the start are from OUR team having less players then they do.

 

 

I get some players really don't like premades and blaming them seems like an easy out, but these matches ending early have nothing do with premades, there is something wrong with the matchmaker and it needs to be addressed.

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What I see most evenings is:

- Successful queues with most every war completing as normal for hours in the prime-time evening. Some long queue times but mostly fair queue times.

- Then a well known, much respected team of 4 uber aces begins queueing together at a certain time of the night. Then the w/l of every war is pre-determined and people stop queueing and start dropping before games start. Many 30 second ends happen, and queue times are long.

 

 

I think you are seeing what you want to see. As I stated in my OP, I actually see more games successfully start when we are playing as a group than at other times, probably because this is GSF prime time. I also have seen this issue in morning, afternoons, and early evenings, while solo queuing on fresh alts and established alts. I'm also seeing people complain about this and beg in /gsf.

 

If the game was just people dodging us, either by leaving at the sight of us or avoiding queuing when we are on, I wouldn't have made a post about this being a systemic problem. We would just adjust. But it is a systemic problem, with nothing to do with us, or any other group, hence this post.

 

Additionally, RL has interfered with our GSF group last week anyway, so we couldn't even bring a four man to the table pretty much any of those nights. As much as I'd love to oppress my fellow pilots each and every night, sadly, I cannot. That didn't stop me from hearing people on my team debate over whether our opponents were really us on alts, complete with guessing as to which one was which. At one point I was told to focus a gunship on account of that gunship assuredly being Verain. It's been pretty legit.

 

Also, as Drako says, many of these games quit while our team is down men, which also wouldn't go along with that theory.

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It is a bug and it needs to be fixed.

 

...

What I see most evenings is:

- Successful queues with most every war completing as normal for hours in the prime-time evening. Some long queue times but mostly fair queue times.

- Then a well known, much respected team of 4 uber aces begins queueing together at a certain time of the night. Then the w/l of every war is pre-determined and people stop queueing and start dropping before games start. Many 30 second ends happen, and queue times are long.

...

 

Yes, I've also seen this happen.

 

Back on topic, I've seen matches without aces (that I know of) end early due to matchmaker sending the backfill player to the wrong side, both 8 vs. 8 and 12 vs. 12. Or, more precisely,

6 vs. 8 -> 6 vs. 9 -> abort, or

9 vs. 11 -> 9 vs. 12 -> abort

I don't doubt the 10 vs. 13 happens too. The 9 vs. 12 or 10 vs. 13 are harder to see because the match-end scoreboard fills up.

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I was actually worried about what you mentioned here as well. That the reason the games were ending after 30 seconds was because people were dropping from seeing our premade.

 

So before Verain made this post we made sure that wasn't the reason we were seeing it this much. We did this by solo queue ing on alts.

 

The results were exactly the same, many games are ending 30 seconds after the start of games because the matchmaker isn't filling out one side.

 

Also Stellar LOTS of the games that end 30 seconds after the start are from OUR team having less players then they do.

 

I get some players really don't like premades and blaming them seems like an easy out, but these matches ending early have nothing do with premades, there is something wrong with the matchmaker and it needs to be addressed.

 

My suggestion was to splitting into 2 groups to see if it happens less, not that it would be eliminated. And I think that is pretty safe to assume it will due to stopping the extra drops on both teams. As you may know, to some people it isn't fun to be on either team of a pre-determined match. You can either be on a team where you will only get 1 kill because the aces pop all those juicy red balloons before you can get to them, or you can be the balloon.

 

I also agree that something else needs to be done with the match-maker to eliminate this issue no matter if much of the time it is caused by drops from seeing an imbalanced war or not. I still would like the queue to change to not start a game unless it has full people on both sides. The count-down should simply stop if someone drops and restart once both teams are full. This could eliminate 100% the need for a 30 second early end.

 

I only suggested that as a partial solution because I play pretty much every night, during prime time and almost the only time I see early wars end is during that phenomena. I realize my suggestion may have seemed like an attempt to address the bigger issues of "why match maker doesn't work when aces group up" or "what can we do to eliminate things which kill the queue" but those are conversations for different threads. We know something needs to be fixed with the start of war in the engine, splitting the aces would help some, not a complete fix, any improvement is a good one.

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My suggestion was to splitting into 2 groups to see if it happens less, not that it would be eliminated.

 

Will this somehow help with all the times this happens when we are not on?

 

I specifically made a thread about early ends to games. If you want to turn this into yet another cry thread about an unrelated topic like premades, why not make a thread about that so I can call you out, instead of bringing that crap into here, where we're discussion a topic that is happening all around the clock on multiple servers?

 

 

As you may know, to some people it isn't fun to be on either team of a pre-determined match.

 

...and these people are so sensitive that they preemptively don't take queue pops on servers we aren't logged into at times we aren't playing, right?

 

Because of us.

 

I still would like the queue to change to not start a game unless it has full people on both sides. The count-down should simply stop if someone drops and restart once both teams are full. This could eliminate 100% the need for a 30 second early end.

 

I think this is the wrong answer, but it is in the right vein. Usually, when the game is like 11/5 with 10 seconds to go, this would work pretty well. But there has to be some moment at which the game would go. If we're going with rules corrections like this, I'd say something like: increase the baseline time to start the match by 15 seconds. Reduce the pop timer by 10 seconds. In the game lobby, at 10 seconds left, a system message displays and the timer goes to 40 seconds. If the game still doesn't pick up enough to have it work, start it like normal and let it time out.

 

Mark any players that missed the queue with some manner of low priority thing. Up the chances of making an 8 man with the next game (maybe). In any event, the players that missed the queue should have a harder time getting into the next game, and be considered as less reliable, potentially afk, or potentially griefing, whatever. That black mark should be account bound and reasonably transient.

 

 

I only suggested that as a partial solution because I play pretty much every night, during prime time and almost the only time I see early wars end is during that phenomena.

 

Give me servers and times where it doesn't happen. I had it happen two out of three games one day on Malgus prime time, but I can only rarely even be on at Malgus prime time. I've been seeing it happen a lot. And again, this also happened during a whole week where we weren't playing.

 

We know something needs to be fixed with the start of war in the engine, splitting the aces would help some, not a complete fix, any improvement is a good one.

 

No, it wouldn't. It's a terrible idea too. If this only happened when we were queuing together, I wouldn't have made the thread.

Edited by Verain
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I had it happen two out of three games one day on Malgus prime time, but I can only rarely even be on at Malgus prime time.

 

That must have been a case of very bad luck. I play a couple of hours on DM almost every night and I have rarely seen games end prematurely since 5.9.2. However, it is still disturbing that most games start without full teams.

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I still would like the queue to change to not start a game unless it has full people on both sides. The count-down should simply stop if someone drops and restart once both teams are full. This could eliminate 100% the need for a 30 second early end.

 

Most people in the game do other stuff while waiting in queue, whether its for a flashpoint or a ground warzone or a GSF match. Keeping people hung up in a match lobby waiting for it to back fill is definitely not a good idea even if it can't be griefed.

 

And lets be clear: the system is intended to not pop a match unless there are enough people queued. We know this from PTS testing of 5.5. If we assume that system is still working as intended, then the problem has to be with players not accepting the queue pop, either intentionally or because they are AFK and time out. Now that the queue pop notification is unique from the ground warzone UI (another 5.9.2 change, long overdue), its pretty clear that if they don't take the pop, and they are at the keyboard, then they are busy doing something else or waiting for something better to come along (a ground WZ pop perhaps). I'd have preferred that person busy doing something else just un-queued, but I have certainly been in situations where I tried to finish a mission or combat in a phased area and missed the pop acceptance by a second or two because something took longer than anticipated.

 

If all that is true, then I think we can infer that the system creates the teams right before it sends the invites, meaning its figured out how to divide everyone based on the composite experience "score" of total matches across legacy and highest requisition invested of all the ships on your bar. It's trying to create an even match, now since 5.9.2, and thus it sends the invites out to very specific people to make each team, based on whether they are grouped, what their "score" is, and how long they've been waiting. I think the markedly outnumbered teams at match onset are the result of the system trying to find similarly scored people to backfill when a disproportionate # of similarly scored people decided not to take the pop. Before, the system would just be sending out invites to the folks ungrouped who have been waiting the longest, and therefore the backfills might have been scrubs, aces, or anything in between. Now, its trying to find a similarly-scored player to replace the one that no-showed, and that takes longer, if one such player isn't actually in the queue.

 

I imagine there must be a problem with creating the teams AFTER the people are invited, since players can trickle in at any point in that 90 seconds. So, if that's the case, I'm not sure how to solve the "no-show" problem. You could overall increase the amount of time to accept a pop which simultaneously increases the amount of time in lobby for people who accept right away. You could individually increase the time in the lobby, giving more time for the matchmaker to try and find replacements to backfill. You could give more time to "This warzone will end unless more players join," which would also give the matchmaker time to find backups, but a lot of points could be scored in either game mode by the larger team, creating a different set of problems. None of these ideas will definitively solve a "no-show" problem. But you can't just "not start a match" until its full.

 

I will say that in the case of ground PVE activity finder queues, it appears as if the player trinity role, and in some cases, the flashpoint or uprising, is decided AFTER everyone accepts. If the GSF queue was re-designed to act more like ground pve activity finder, then I would speculate that it could simply dissolve the two ops groups if the right number of high score, mid score, and low score individuals don't accept the pop, and it would wait to pop again until enough people re-entered the queue … Just like, if a healer or tank doesn't accept the group finder invite for a random vet mode flashpoint, it will just not start anything until the right distribution of roles has been selected. It doesn't actually teleport anyone into the match lobby until the teams are actually ready.

 

I'm guessing the code for spawning a GSF match is based on the code for spawning a ground warzone match, and it would be an undertaking to completely re-write it to function like ground pve activity finder.

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Of course, the problem with the approach of making the system more like ground PVE activity finder is that you cannot enforce X number of high “score“ players, Y number of mid range score players, and Z number of low score players, in the same way that ground PVE can enforce a certain number of tanks, A certain number of healers, and a certain number of DPS. Also, ground PVE can enforce the Trinity set up because the difficulty of the content is determined by the computer, whereas in PVP the difficulty is based on the skill of the players you are facing. So, I am not sure that a redesign to make the matchmaking more like ground PVE matchmaking is feasible either. Edited by phalczen
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  • 1 year later...

For the record, what we are seeing now is nowhere close to what happened when I made this post. The devs have addressed whatever matchmaking issue we were seeing back then.

 

Perhaps matchmaker could be a little more clever at getting enough people in line before it pops a match, or a lot more clever at rerouting people coming late to the party. But the issues we are seeing are unlike what we saw before- the game was barely playable at times back then.

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