Please add Ranking and Matchmaking... currently it's very rare to get a match that's evenly paired, at least on Tulak Horde. And it's just as frustrating winning a game without having had a chance to really participate as it is if you're the best on your side having shot down *one* opponent.

I really don't know how matchmaker could be fixed. I mean granted there are glaring issues with it, like when it puts four solo Aces on one side, or two premades on the same side. But, even if it didn't do those things, I am not convinced we would see significantly more balanced matches. I don't know how you would get matchmaker to figure out people's skill. And in GSF, skill makes the biggest difference. I understand at the moment its based on flying time. So two people with 1000 hours would be considered equal in matchmaker's eyes. But that is simply not true. It would have to base it on average damage and average kills. Legacy wide I guess. I think that would work. Then you could balance the good ,mediocre and bad players. But even then you wouldn't be factoring in ability to get those kills while staying within 5m of a node. Which can turn a match heavily one way or the other. So, I dunno, seems like an impossible task to balance matchmaker if I am honest. But, speaking candidly, you don't need to rely on matchmaker to get wins.

Please add Ranking and Matchmaking... currently it's very rare to get a match that's evenly paired, at least on Tulak Horde. And it's just as frustrating winning a game without having had a chance to really participate as it is if you're the best on your side having shot down *one* opponent.

matchmaking is definitely off, they need to fix it., Maybe even add in solo or grouped options. At least if everyone was solo, there's a better chance (however small) that the teams might be more balanced. It's not fun, spawing in and having a GS one shot you. Or you fire everything into your target, and tickle them, while they fire one, and boom.

They need a bracket, so new players can learn without 'pro' <redacted> players being the *&^& we see at the moment.

Edit: You get people who are supposed lovers of GSF, that keep trying to deny the reality of what most new players face, and that is HUGELY unbalanced matches, when match after match, you get the 'pros' sitting on spawn sites, or holding all 3 'nodes', it wears you down to a point where people don't care. So you get people who could be fans, but instead give up, and sit on nodes, or just fly aimlessly until they crash, when the 'warning' hits, so they can't get kicked.

I think I've seen one match in the last week, that someone actually said, come off the spawn spot, and don't be a <redacted>.

sharpenedstick said:

GSF needs new rewards

imho, just like the regular 'space game on rails' , GSF needs a heckuva lot more than just mere shiny item "rewards"

GSF needs PVE missions (grouped & solo versions) , as well as all PVP maps to be accessible 24/7 as 'training areas' (for practice and learning the zones, hiding spots, power-up locations, etc. ) . Furthermore, it would be nice to have open free-roaming expansive zones for things like in-game player Events and/or Space-Mining (for new rare resources/materials ) .

Oh and also: GSF needs *JOYSTICK SUPPORT* , cuz no legit self-respecting gamer-pilot uses a silly mouse to fly.

I really don't know how matchmaker could be fixed. I mean granted there are glaring issues with it, like when it puts four solo Aces on one side, or two premades on the same side. But, even if it didn't do those things, I am not convinced we would see significantly more balanced matches. I don't know how you would get matchmaker to figure out people's skill. And in GSF, skill makes the biggest difference. I understand at the moment its based on flying time. So two people with 1000 hours would be considered equal in matchmaker's eyes. But that is simply not true. It would have to base it on average damage and average kills. Legacy wide I guess. I think that would work. Then you could balance the good ,mediocre and bad players. But even then you wouldn't be factoring in ability to get those kills while staying within 5m of a node. Which can turn a match heavily one way or the other. So, I dunno, seems like an impossible task to balance matchmaker if I am honest. But, speaking candidly, you don't need to rely on matchmaker to get wins.

Not quite sure how they do the record keeping, but if you did something like:

• Matches played (ideally per account, but they probably only have per legacy numbers readily available)
  
• Weighted gearing of ships in hangar bar (a straight average is no good because things like tier 4 and 5 on primary, secondary, and system are disproportionately powerful)
  
• Accuracy (need a weighting here for gunship/non-gunship) over the last 20 games
  
• Medals over the last 20 games,
  

Then chuck all that into something like

GSF_Player_rating =  sqrt(Matches_played) + Gear_weight + 2*Recent_accuracy + 1.5*Recent_avg_medals + Recent_avg_damage 

I think you could get a decent correlation between statistics that are already tracked in one way or another and player skill. The last 20 game average for accuracy and medals is largely to get at the meta change from 5.5, where old characters might have slightly misleading stats on some ships and as a bonus also captures things like really practicing skills in a ship class, getting mentored, or coming back from a long break, things that cause a potential for significant skill changes over a relatively short number of games. Makes the rating responsive to recent play by having some aspect that measure raw time and gear, but also looks at recent performance so that a vast history of long gone games doesn't mask the current level of skill. I like accuracy and medals over damage and kills because I think that avoids skewing from Dom matches and people that are doing well in a support role, where kills and damage might not capture things that are key to the outcome of a match, like smart beacon bomber use. Though I suppose a average damage over last 20 matches thrown in might make it even better by discounting things like everybody grabbing a bomber and heading to one sat to wait out a loss rather than trying to win. Actually, I like that enough so I'm going to edit my formula above.

Once you have that player rating, the other big step that's needed is balancing within the teams. That means selecting a pool of players big enough to make a match from the queue, then after that pool has filled you balance from that pool, not on a pick by pick basis from the queue. By basically "closing" the pool, and then doing a balance sorting, you avoid the sorts of "all good players on one team" fiascos we sometimes see in GSF. It won't ensure great balance, and if the queue doesn't have a sufficiently even distribution of player rankings before the pool for a match closes you could still get some very one-sided stomps. The tendency though, I think, would be to turn some of your 1000 - 50 and 50 - 3 sorts of matches into things more like 1000 - 270 and 50 -18 matches. Not close by any means, but your worst case matches wouldn't be as bad.

I think both are doable within the scope of things that Bioware can change, and would give us something significantly better than what we currently have. The tricky part is that to make it worthwhile, you'd also have to work out a similar rating system for ground PvP, because it's probably only worth doing as a project if you can improve matchmaking for GSF and Warzones based on the same underlying matchmaking algorithm.

I seem to be taking up matchmaker improvements as my next big GSF improvement lobbying effort. I think they've gotten ship balance to the point where in terms of tackling big GSF projects matchmaking is probably a decent choice to be next in line. Better tutorial and PvE would be nice, but the AI for that seems like it might be out of scope, especially since Squadrons now exists.

Not quite sure how they do the record keeping, but if you did something like:

• Matches played (ideally per account, but they probably only have per legacy numbers readily available)
  
• Weighted gearing of ships in hangar bar (a straight average is no good because things like tier 4 and 5 on primary, secondary, and system are disproportionately powerful)
  
• Accuracy (need a weighting here for gunship/non-gunship) over the last 20 games
  
• Medals over the last 20 games,
  

 

Then chuck all that into something like

GSF_Player_rating =  sqrt(Matches_played) + Gear_weight + 2*Recent_accuracy + 1.5*Recent_avg_medals + Recent_avg_damage 

 

I think you could get a decent correlation between statistics that are already tracked in one way or another and player skill. The last 20 game average for accuracy and medals is largely to get at the meta change from 5.5, where old characters might have slightly misleading stats on some ships and as a bonus also captures things like really practicing skills in a ship class, getting mentored, or coming back from a long break, things that cause a potential for significant skill changes over a relatively short number of games. Makes the rating responsive to recent play by having some aspect that measure raw time and gear, but also looks at recent performance so that a vast history of long gone games doesn't mask the current level of skill. I like accuracy and medals over damage and kills because I think that avoids skewing from Dom matches and people that are doing well in a support role, where kills and damage might not capture things that are key to the outcome of a match, like smart beacon bomber use. Though I suppose a average damage over last 20 matches thrown in might make it even better by discounting things like everybody grabbing a bomber and heading to one sat to wait out a loss rather than trying to win. Actually, I like that enough so I'm going to edit my formula above.

 

Once you have that player rating, the other big step that's needed is balancing within the teams. That means selecting a pool of players big enough to make a match from the queue, then after that pool has filled you balance from that pool, not on a pick by pick basis from the queue. By basically "closing" the pool, and then doing a balance sorting, you avoid the sorts of "all good players on one team" fiascos we sometimes see in GSF. It won't ensure great balance, and if the queue doesn't have a sufficiently even distribution of player rankings before the pool for a match closes you could still get some very one-sided stomps. The tendency though, I think, would be to turn some of your 1000 - 50 and 50 - 3 sorts of matches into things more like 1000 - 270 and 50 -18 matches. Not close by any means, but your worst case matches wouldn't be as bad.

 

I think both are doable within the scope of things that Bioware can change, and would give us something significantly better than what we currently have. The tricky part is that to make it worthwhile, you'd also have to work out a similar rating system for ground PvP, because it's probably only worth doing as a project if you can improve matchmaking for GSF and Warzones based on the same underlying matchmaking algorithm.

 

I seem to be taking up matchmaker improvements as my next big GSF improvement lobbying effort. I think they've gotten ship balance to the point where in terms of tackling big GSF projects matchmaking is probably a decent choice to be next in line. Better tutorial and PvE would be nice, but the AI for that seems like it might be out of scope, especially since Squadrons now exists.

I like what you say suggest in principle, but I feel like 20 matches isn't enough to take an average damage figure from. What if someone plays Tensor or Bomber for a bunch of matches and so tanks their average damage. Maybe 50 games? or 100?

I think kills needs to go in there somewhere too. I appreciate what you say about kills and damage, and I think your suggestions for other stats / factors are good, but the fact remains matches are so often (vast majority of the time?) determined by the players getting the most kills? Even in Domination, and especially when someone is doing those kills while on-node.

In order to provide balance, you need to offset players who can rack up large kills counts (be it in TDM or DOM) against a higher average skill level on the other side ( in the event there is no 2nd Ace available to match them against). SO for example, a match where Ace X gets 25 kills but the match ends 50-49, was a balanced match and matchmaker did a good job. The best you can hope for in terms of match balance when the pool has limited options for matchmaker to work with. But if it put the Ace on the other side, then that's a match that would've ended up 50-15.

I can't see how it would ever balance this scenario correctly if it didn't factor in kills?

As far as matches going into averages 20 was basically the smallest number I figured might give a decent answer. Data storage is cheap so there wouldn't really be a problem with going up to 50 or 100 matches. There's sort of a tradeoff between accuracy of the long term average and the speed with which the average updates for recent changes in skill. A smaller pool of matches makes the rating more responsive to changes in player performance, a bigger pool is less sensitive to variation due to randomness or due to "going to fly this lame build for the lulz," that might not represent true skill. I tend slightly to the quicker change side of things in preference.

I'm also somewhat influenced by having seen a fair bit of team vs team play back in the day. If you have a couple of SRW groups going up against Drakolich and friends, you get extremely high skill, but the kill numbers tend to be not that impressive. With enough good players on each side kills per player go down steeply. For one thing people are much more likely to take survivable damage to shields more often because they go evasive before a kill is landed, and there are also enough skilled players around that instead of one ace picking up all the kills whoever happens to be close and more or less pointed at the target gets the kill, because basically everyone is skilled enough to get the kill. High kill counts are just as much a symptom of poor matchmaking and an abundance of low skill players in a match as they are an indication of the skill of the player getting the kills.

In a best case scenario, where GSF population and average skill go up, maybe even to the point where team vs team matches become somewhat common again, ideally the matchmaker doesn't start getting thrown off by solo vs team fliers or by time of day someone typically is flying. Basically if I have an option to make the matchmaker blind to things that are less reliable indicators of skill then I'm happy to do that.

Personally, at the end of a match if I'm looking for whether or not there are names that I should look for in the future my ranking of stats goes: accuracy, medals, damage, combined kills and assists. Any stat can be cheesed of course, but accuracy gets at fundamental flying and shooting skills and medals gets at playing objectives (which includes kills and assists). Damage gets at how actively engaged the player is in combat. I tend to regard the kills and assists as byproducts of those factors, byproducts that are more vulnerable to variation in conditions than the underlying factors that produce them. I don't think I've ever seen someone with over 20 kills do poorly on accuracy, medals and damage, but there are plenty of times when I've seen someone that I know is very good get 6-12 kills, but still have have excellent accuracy, medals, and damage. That's sort of typical for a strong player in a well used support ship.

I do also have in the back of my mind the scenario, what if Drako decided to do a hard support "no kills challenge." What sort of win rate would that produce if solo queuing for a bunch of games? I'm wagering well over 50%. There would still be accidental kills I'm sure, but a scoreline like: 2 22 0 108570 52% 278 17, would be perfectly reasonable. Likely game-winning as well.

I tend slightly to the quicker change side of things in preference.

I lean to ward the slower rate of change, if only because no one suddenly steps up their level of play in 20 matches. That's very quick. Someone doesn't go from strong vet to Ace, or from Ace to Elite Ace in 20 matches. So by having a slower rate we do at least cover off other factors that effect their damage.

I do also have in the back of my mind the scenario, what if Drako decided to do a hard support "no kills challenge." What sort of win rate would that produce if solo queuing for a bunch of games? I'm wagering well over 50%. There would still be accidental kills I'm sure, but a scoreline like: 2 22 0 108570 52% 278 17, would be perfectly reasonable. Likely game-winning as well.