Design the 'perfect' matchmaking system

[Tap In]

Tap In's post (I did see your first post but didn't appreciate what they meant by Dynamic Handicapping and its application as 'shifting momentum') suggests it's in effect unknown to players and making a positive contribution. It'd be good to get more info on this!

from a dev... there was quite a backlash 'ala Ostepop wehn this became known, but again some of us LIKED it. they later added a H/C mode with 0 Handicap.

First up, there is some handicapping, but not in every mode, and it’s not as prevalent as many of you are making it out to be. There is also one major rule to our handicapping. We never handicap a great player to be worse; we only attempt to help out the weaker players to be on a more competitive playing field.

Siege = No handicapping
CTF = Low handicapping
All other modes = Medium handicapping

In order for handicapping to kick in, you have to be pretty far ahead. At that point, a percentage of handicapping will start, which means that when the score is close, handicapping does much less. For example, if we set handicapping to kick in when one team is winning by 40 points, it starts to ramp up from 20% of the full handicapping values, and continue moving all the way up to 100% if the losing team continues to do poorly (they would have to be doing VERY poorly for 100%).

The main reason for this is to keep the game fun and exciting. Just like how most racing games have rubberbanding, or respawn time changes, handicapping is a norm within gaming. Think of how many times you were coming down to the final kills in a Team Anarchy game, or the last few points are adding up in Damage Control, and your team barely squeaks by for a win? Those situations drive your adrenaline and in turn, you enjoy the game much more.

The stats affected by handicapping are the following, and they are all extremely minimal. Remember that this is only given to a weaker player, since we do not touch the stats of the winning players.

- Total HP
- Time before Health Regeneration starts
- Movement Speed
- Reload Speed

The goal of handicapping is not to change the outcome of the game, but to make it fun to both win and lose, as stated above. A close match that comes down to the wire is always more exciting than a pure blowout. Also, it will rarely ever affect the actual Win/Loss outcome, because two close players/teams will never feel the effects of handicapping.

We are also planning on eventually adding a “Pro” or “Hardcore” playlist (Still trying to come up with a good name) specifically with rules drawn from one (or a combination) of the MP competitive ladder tournaments. This will of course have handicapping turned off. As always, you can also play a Custom Match and turn handicapping off as well, and still gain XP.




From Volition's board

 

[MfA]

according to Red Faction :G devs it is not only already used in their game but they know of others who have it under the hood.

I must admit that in console games it would be hard to see the difference with all that lag

 

[Cornsnake]

The current system favours the best players almost to exclusion.

Actually most current games unlock better weapons, ect, by simply playing. Turning the favour more towards time spend, rather then skill. Which I think an extremely bad idea.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

For the same reason faster horses are handicapped. But I think you're imagining a complete levelling, rather than a more moderate rebalancing. So instead of a noob losing 30 deaths to no kills, they lose 20 deaths to 10 kills and feel they at least were contributing and had fun doing so. I'd have thought the best players would appreciated bragging rights to a huge handicapping too. "I've got a quarter your health and I still beat you!"

And those 10 kills would still piss me off if i know that without some stupid mechanic i would have killed him every time.

The idea is to look at online gaming from every side and come up with a system whereby everyone is having fun, not just either the bad players or the good ones

To me it looks like the bad players are having just as much fun as the good ones, atleast judging by how many extremely crappy lvl 10 prestige players there are in MW2 and CoD4.

Instead of handicapping, cant you just have good match making and then balance the teams to even things out? I know ive played a online fps which would take the best player from the winning team over the looser if the margin between the teams was to big.

The current system favours the best players almost to exclusion.

Not sure what system you refer to, leveling systems? I wouldn't really say that most games favour the best players, some games favour time spend (unlocks), but that has nothing to do with skill.

And besides, in properly balanced games, those unlocks are just there to make things interesting, not to favour the best. In Call of Duty for example, pretty much all the best guns are available right from the start, and there is virtually no difference between the guns with very few exceptions. (A lot of people will say otherwise in CoD, but thats because they suck ass and need something to blame. My KD stays the same doesn't matter if im lvl 1 after prestige, or max lvl.)

 

[Svensk Viking]

Coming mostly as a PC-gamer (Starcraft, CS) to online-play on consoles, I really hate the matchmaking system...They should just scrap it

 

[patsu]

Why ? What is the ideal system to you ?


I don't think players should be handicapped. They should just balance the team and that's it.
Dedicated server and balancing can work together. IMHO, RFOM has proven that.

I don't know if MAG has team balancing yet. But it has a lot of players, so may be it averages out.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Coming mostly as a PC-gamer (Starcraft, CS) to online-play on consoles, I really hate the matchmaking system...They should just scrap it

I approve this message

Matchmaking is just a bunch of pussy footing. I do agree with quick match services that get you into a game very fast, but all the matchmaking stuff I think somewhat takes away from what a game should be. Sure you want to have fun, but giving it away in a multiplayer arena makes it too easy, and therefore unnecessarily boring very quick. You need compelling gameplay more importantly. If you make it fun to die as well as kick ass, then a matchmaking system isn't needed.

 

[Phil]

I'm not sure you can really compare PC online games with consoles games in general as the markets must be quite different. On PC, I'd say the majority of gamers are much more 'hardcore' and are willing to go through a lot of effort to get the right experience for them. After all, the hassle of installing PC games and seting them up isn't quite as flawless either, so they're used to the challenge already.

Console games have to work a lot more flawless in comparison. As such, I think the online experience demands an easy to get into process. RFOM had a very simple and awesome process. You had both the "search for games" options in the custom-games and in all the ranked ones, you had the easy and mostly flawless match-making process.

Call of Duty is rather flawless too. It's quick to use and just gets you in the game rather quick. KZ2 was a bit less convinient at first, especially since at the beginning, the information on games you could chose was very limited, which forced you to get into and out of games quite often. It's still not perfect, but it's gotten easier.

Not that I don't mind having to go through the extra hassle - but I do have friends that are much more "average consumer" like and first impression is very important to them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We tried to play some online games on PC, Neverwinter Nights and...something else. It was a buggy, awkward, broken and frustrating challenge they we never really pulled off. I am unable to view PC gaming as the pinnacle of the online experience!

 

[NRP]

Not to mention a-hole PC server admins who kick/ban you for dominating him or his clan mates, to make room for his friends, or because you keep blowing up his equipment (in BF2). If you find a good server, then it works well. But as time goes by, it seems to get harder to find good servers.

So it ain't all rosy in PC land either.

 

[dobwal]

The biggest problem with matchmaking is imo to use the correct values.

I think that the conjunctive use of KD, kills per hours and deaths per hours could allow for proper balancing.

Looking at these stats, can somewhat tell the type of player as well as skill level. A good sniper would have a relatively high KD but a relatively lower KPH and DPH compared to a good CQC or midrange player who might have the same or lower KD but would have a higher KPH or DPH. A poor sniper would have a relatively low DPH but also a relatively low KD and KPH. A poor CQC would have a relatively high DPH and poor KD but a rather respectable KPH ratio.

You wouldn't be able to differentiate a camper from a sniper but you could differentiate effective ones from non effective ones because effective ones would mirror a good sniper with a good KD, respectable KPH numbers and low DPH. Even if snipers and campers were sandwiched together, they could be evenly distributed between the two teams with the makeup mirroring the overall population (# of snipers versus # of campers overall). You could get alittle more detailed and track weapon loadout tendency to better differentiate campers from snipers.

A weighted formula would need to be created based on these variables but that would require real world data to get a good baseline and continued tracking of the formula's effectiveness over time to tweak the formula to provide the best balancing for the overall population of your userbase.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I like you're thinking, dobwal! I was thinking of an algorithm of these sorts in principle, but haven't found an envelope back to pencil on yet.

 

[Mobius1aic]

I was halfway kidding with my whole matchmaking comment, and halfway I wasn't. My problems with matchmaking are in a wholly against the idea of calculating ones skill and having "similarly skilled" players only in a match. The essence of MP is unpredictability. By forcing one to be pitting against an assortment of people both at the zenith and pit of intelligence, and in between, we are confronted by a larger scope of experiences and tactics. Sports teams don't do this, and I don't think games should either. I seriously don't think the merits of a game are judged by a games ability to make matches with similarly skilled opponents. Other things like being able to jump into a game with a friend/s or a clan is more important. If it's not forced, I can live with games having skill based matchmaking as it would be an option, but if it's something all players are inherently required to be subject to, then I see it as detrimental to the gaming experience and might lower the useful MP life of a game.