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Matchmaking a step in the right direction...next steps:


FourPawnBenoni

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For the most part the games I've played in have had the advertised healer vs healer, or 2 healers vs 1 tank and 1 healer...so that part is good. The "hidden ranking"...I'm not sure about that so far. I have had quite a few games where the main fight was at a south or mid node and had 2-3 dps on my team that were in the 600 - 1200 dps range...why were they not in a game with less experienced players?

 

Perhaps this is just an unavoidable population issue.

 

Also, I like the acid changes. Good job.

 

Anyway, so next steps in my opinion as they look to improve PVP experience:

 

1.) Fine tune the "hidden ranking" matchmaking. Does it go by medals? Wins & losses? Objective scores? Number of matches played? Valor level? Achievements?

 

2.) PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE...this is my biggest complaint right now. Even more than having a few bads on my team. The desync issues are just terrible.

A.) Players not showing up when they are capping.

B.) Rolling and disappearing. Force speeding and disappearing (seems to happen most of the time on Yavin Ruins).

C.) Being attacked and running around a LOS only to be killed while on my screen I'm behind the object and after I die I'm in front of it (p.s. I play on east coast servers, live on east coast and latency is usually 40-50 so the issue is not on my end)

D.) Force leaps, teleports, etc that fall short

E.) Unable to crouch at certain times, like when too close to a wall (as a sniper)

F.) Force barrier animation AFTER I die even though I pressed it before I died. Especially annoying as you usually will crumple to the ground and die again in the spawn area causing you to miss the open gate.

G.) As melee, chasing after a kiting ranged player and they are glitching around on the map

 

3.) DPS specs should not have guard mechanic

 

Feel free to add to the list of things you think they should address next

Edited by FourPawnBenoni
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I made these points in another thread, but they are relevant to this discussion too. Because from what I can tell, match making isn’t working as it should.

 

... SNIP

 

match making is borked, especially the skill vs skill vs gear match making. Even the healer / tank match making is out if whack, but I’ve yet to see a team with 4 healers, especially a premade.

Are you 100% sure they were a premade of 4 healers because I have my doubts, especially if your team also didn’t have 4 healers.

 

When I see there are too many healers, it’s usually because people haven’t accepted the pop or have quit at the start or during the match. When that happens, the match making goes out the window and the queue puts who ever is next into the game, even if they are other healers who wouldn’t normally have been there.

 

The 3 biggest match making problems I’m seeing are:

1. Skill vs Skill match making is non existent

2. Gear vs Gear match making is non existent

3. Premade vs Premades is barely existent and when I see it I think it’s just random (so probably non existent)

 

Skill vs Skill

This is so broken or not even implemented. I’ve been in matches where players can’t crack 400k and and the other teams players are 1.5 mil to 3 mil dps

There is obviously a massive skill imbalance there. Sadly that is more the norm than the exception.

 

Gear vs gear

I’ve been in so many matches, especially arena, where one side has 248 gear - 236 Augments and the other team has 219 -240 gear and no Augments.

There is zero match making of gear in situations like that

 

Premade vs Premade

While I understand that sometimes there may not be another Premade to go against a premade, there are certainly plenty in the queue and the majority of the time I see them, there is no Premade on the other team.

This indicates to me that the queue isn’t looking at how many premades there currently are in the queue or in pvp matches. It seems it is still “working” the old way of who ever is next will pop.

 

Two Premade scenarios :

a. it’s ready to pop a match and there is a premade at the front of the queue and another one outside of the first 16 players ready to pop, the queue will ignore the second Premade and just make a premade vs pug match.

b. there is a match about to end with one Premade in it, but instead of the queue waiting 2 minutes to put both premades together in the next match, it just makes a premade vs pug.

 

Neither of those is Premade vs Premade match making and actually perpetuates the cycle of premades vs pugs because those premades get locked into a queue pop rotation with only pugs.

This is extremely bad, especially as how the skill vs skill match making isn’t working as advertised. Premades on voice always have an advantage over pugs, but when they are constantly put with the team of higher skilled players vs the weaker ones, it’s a steam roll of epic proportions.

 

Adding all 3 problems together

When all 3 of these happen in match after match, the game is even worse than before the changes.

Team A. gets the Premade, the 4 highest skilled pugs and they all have 248 gear and 236 Augments

Team B. gets all pugs, the next tier is skilled pugs and mainly have gear under 248, most don’t even have 242 gear.

The match is a forgone conclusion before the game starts. It is so one sided that it’s a waste of time and extremely unenjoyable for most people in the match. Even those on the winning side get bored of this sort of one sided play when the novelty wears off.

Then team A and B get stuck into a pop rotation together and this happens over and over. Till eventually people give up and stop playing.

 

All important pop times

Queue pop times are important, but they should not be the number one factor when making the queue algorithm. Which seems to be what Bioware care about the most. Fast pops become irrelevant if pvp matches are crap. I’m sure most pvpers would rather wait an extra minute or two so that people are matched properly. ie Premades vs Premades, healers vs healers, tanks vs tanks, skill vs skill and gear vs gear.

The only time those things can really have a big affect on pop times is when the queue population gets so low that it struggles to make two 16 man matches. Even then, there are still 32 players to try and balance out what is left and if there is a premade, you put the very best 6 players on the other side to try and balance it out.

 

My conclusion

The parameters set for skill vs skill are hugely faulty, what every they are. There is something so fundamentally wrong that they need to fix this first and foremost. Otherwise the rest of the balancing act is pointless.

Gear vs gear should be a second consideration once skill vs Skill is achieved, but if skill vs Skill is achieved properly, gear vs gear is less of a problem.

Healers and tanks should be limited to either one healer and tank, 2 healers or 2 tanks per side (balanced out of course). At no time, including low queue population or back fills, should the queue ever pop more than the restriction.

People will soon get the message that too many healers in the queue means less pops.

Class vs class (not mentioned as not as big a deal). This does need some small consideration because if you put all Mercs or all stealth or all range or all melee on one team, skill vs skill (even if fixed) will become skewed.

Premades should also be limited to Premade vs Premade. This is easy to achieve until there is only one Premade in the queue. All it takes is the queue to wait till a match with one Premade finishes (max about 10 mins) to put both premades in the same match. When it gets to only one Premade in the queue, then it can revert to putting the best pugs against the Premade.

 

If Bioware were to implement the match making in that way, matches would be more enjoyable for all concerned.

Quality over pop times should be the number one consideration until queue numbers get so low that it can’t support that.

 

SNIP

 

 

:ph_win:

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1.) Fine tune the "hidden ranking" matchmaking. Does it go by medals? Wins & losses? Objective scores? Number of matches played? Valor level? Achievements?

 

Whatever they have done on the ground seems to be far worse or more flawed than whatever they have done in GSF (and GSF needs some more work too). Either it is because their measurement methods are not good or relevant, or because, unlike in GSF, they have never been recorded properly and started from scratch. If it is the 2nd option, it may take a while to become better, but will kinda happen on its own. If it is the 1st option, than Trixxie's post kinda covers why is it so complicated and inaccurate.

 

I suggested before to use a simple win-loss counter to determine "skill". You gain +1 for a win and -1 for a loss and the matchmaker will attempt to balance the total of both groups (without breaking the T/H balance, of course). That means in general that the people who are "better winners" will be teamed with the "worse losers", and that means that 1 "statistically incorrect outcome" will happen. Either the team wins and the "losers" win with it, or the team loses and the "winners" lose with it. That will cause either side to get closer to the "average point" (a total sum of zero), which means that "loser 1" who just won will get a less good team next time, and the unfortunate "loser 2" who lost last time will get a better team next time. If both losers are equally "contributive" (this is what I say instead of "skilled" because skilled players who choose to play objectively-mindlessly might be just as much a liability), then "loser 2" will probably win the next game because his group would be better, and the cycle will go on. Eventually, each player will reach a "balance point" according to his own "contributive-ness".

 

[All numbers below are just for the example, not accurate math or something]

For example, a good player will usually manage to win when his balance is on +20 (which means he gets worse players in his team), but once he reaches +25 his team will get so bad that he will probably lose a bit, and eventually be "hanging" in +22ish which can then be considered his actual "rating". An average player who is not too contributive but not a liability or a noob will probably balance somewhere around 0, because if he gets a "luck spike" and get up to +6, his team won't be good enough to win for him, and he isn't good enough to save it, and if he gets a "bad luck spike" and gets down to -6, his team will be good enough to win, and he isn't bad enough to ruin it. Bads and noobs will probably get somewhere around -20 before the good teams they get can carry them, but once they get carried to high (-15ish), they will start losing again because they won't have enough gods on their side anymore.

 

Note that premades kinda screw all that because they can keep the 4 tops on the same team and have better coordination (which might also be voicecomm). There is no question that matchmaking will forever remain imperfect and will not completely disable the possibility of stomps as long as premades are allowed...

 

2.) PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE...this is my biggest complaint right now. Even more than having a few bads on my team. The desync issues are just terrible.

A.) Players not showing up when they are capping.

B.) Rolling and disappearing. Force speeding and disappearing (seems to happen most of the time on Yavin Ruins).

C.) Being attacked and running around a LOS only to be killed while on my screen I'm behind the object and after I die I'm in front of it (p.s. I play on east coast servers, live on east coast and latency is usually 40-50 so the issue is not on my end)

D.) Force leaps, teleports, etc that fall short

E.) Unable to crouch at certain times, like when too close to a wall (as a sniper)

F.) Force barrier animation AFTER I die even though I pressed it before I died. Especially annoying as you usually will crumple to the ground and die again in the spawn area causing you to miss the open gate.

G.) As melee, chasing after a kiting ranged player and they are glitching around on the map

 

All the above are very good points and there are always more. I suggest you make a separate thread for these, though. Then it can get the full attention rather than (what is probably gonna eventually happen here) some random guy responding to either 1 or 3 and starting a conversation only about it, leaving your other points forgotten and unattended.

 

3.) DPS specs should not have guard mechanic

 

I agree they don't really need it, but I don't think it is a problem that they have it. Consider that a sorc DPS has dark heal, resurgence, and static barrier. All are healer abilities which can be used on others for offrole support and can also function as DCDs if used on themselves. Same goes for kolto probes and injection for the operative, and healing scan and kolto shots for the mercs. All these classes also have additional DCDes beside these offheals (which are, as I said, some kind of DCDs, after all).

It is kinda only fair that tank classes who are DPS specced will also have some offrole support which is taunts and guard. Note that their offrole support cannot function as a personal DCD, so that is actually a point in their favor.

When DPS try to offheal someone, unless they do it very well, it will probably exhaust their resources. It is bad, but they can mostly run away to recover.

When DPS try to guard someone, unless they do it very well, they will die from guard damage added on top of their own damage taken.

I think tank classes already have it worse than healer classes.

 

If you say both tank classes should lose guard and healer classes should lose heals while on DPS specs for the sake of "spec purity", I hear you, but that would mean all healer classes need a survivability overhaul because some of them somewhat depend on their healings.

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Possible next step: iterate on the matchmaker.

 

From what I've seen in the starfighter game, it seems to consider a premade as [group with the combined skill of top player between all players in group], not [group with combined skill of top player x number of players in group]. That's the only reason I can think of for it to consider "premade plus random other strong players" vs. "lots of bads and some other strong players" to be balanced. One other option is that it's intentionally making bad matches and hoping we won't notice.

Edited by ALaggyGrunt
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I do have to agree on the bad performance. I just got my first Quesh Ball for the week and it’s worse than before the patch.

 

Operative rolling up the ramp now looks like they are on the ground floor, not the middle floor. When they roll along the top to the line, they are on the middle floor (as usual). But as soon as they get in front of the line, they are on the ground floor again when they score and for some reason they are back to the Ball fast then most people can get from the middle edge.

 

Even I got teleported with ball on my Sorc. I got pushed off the edge (middle). I stopped and looked up to see if I could pass to someone or get a pull and next thing I’m back where I was before the push. I got called a hacker for that :rolleyes:

 

This dysnc gets worse with every patch or update. They are essentially breaking it more every time they do something in the game.

 

Bioware needs to fix this urgently and stop adding new content till they do or pvp will end up being unplayable.

This patch has had more random bugs than any I’ve seen since launch. QT is non existent. I would rather wait a month longer and them get stuff right and fix other things, then playing on a borked game.

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I'm still not sure if this matchmaking system that they came up with is actually working. I just got out of a match where there were only 2 of us with more than 120K hit points on out team and the other had 6, if not a full 8, that were geared out.

 

Needless to say, my team got rolled like they weren't even there.

 

This is really making me curious as to what criteria is actually being used to determine the matches.

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I'm still not sure if this matchmaking system that they came up with is actually working. I just got out of a match where there were only 2 of us with more than 120K hit points on out team and the other had 6, if not a full 8, that were geared out.

 

Needless to say, my team got rolled like they weren't even there.

 

This is really making me curious as to what criteria is actually being used to determine the matches.

 

Sadly this is my experience in most matches. One team slaughters another so much that they have 1.5 - 3 mil each and the other team has one or two people over 1 mil and the rest of their team is sub 400 thousand.

That is not even close to being matched.

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The problem of the matchmaking which I am encoutering in Solo Ranked is that you sometimes get a group of 4d vs 1h and 3d, or even a 1t 3d vs 1h 3d. I mean sure, under specific circumstances you have chances of winning, yet its still not 100% fair.

 

The fact that we are getting much more 1t 1h 2d games is also getting on my nerves as those take long and it makes the whole process slower.

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