3 ms·

The more obvious solution is to bring back custom lobbies and private servers and forget about ranking players at all. Gets rid of a lot of bad behavior too bec

The more obvious solution is to bring back custom lobbies and private servers and forget about ranking players at all. Gets rid of a lot of bad behavior too because servers can police their own communities and players won't get frustrated when a crappy teammate is dragging their ranking down

ColeyG 6y ago
In certain communities, players will choose ranked vs. unranked almost always. I agree that a ranked + custom lobby model should exist though.
cortesoft 6y ago
The purpose of ranking systems is to try to create fair matches. I think ideally you wouldn't show the ranking to the player, just use it to create the match. With a large population, everyone should end up winning about half their games. That would be the sign of a successful ranking system.
- ecdavis 6y ago
  You're conflating ranking and matchmaking systems. A ranking system measures relative skill/performance levels. You can have a ranking system without using it for matchmaking.[0] I don't agree that a typical 50% win rate[1] indicates a successful matchmaking system. For one thing, creating fair matches is _a_ purpose of a matchmaking system, but not necessarily the _sole_ purpose. For another, that people win half their games on average says nothing about how fair the matches were. I think that fairness often gets prioritized over fun. Playing sports should be fun at all levels, but it's particularly important at the lower skill levels that the participants enjoy themselves. That's how sports grow and become cultural institutions. Being a low skill player in a silo of other low skill players is a decidedly un-fun experience that drives a lot of new players away from e-sports. A ranked matchmaking system could be designed with the express purpose of helping low skill players have fun and naturally develop into average skill players.[2] I wonder what such a system would look like. [0] See FiveThirtyEight's Elo ratings for NFL teams: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nfl-predictions/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nfl-predictions/ [1] However that's measured. [2] Under such a system fairness might be relegated to the seeding process for tournament play.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    > I don't agree that a typical 50% win rate Assuming there are no ties, and teams have an even number of players, a multiplayer competitive video game is going to be a zero sum game; for every winner, there is going to be a loser. While I agree that you it isn't the SOLE purpose of a matchmaking system, I do think a fair matchmaking system will end up with most players having a 50% win rate (with a few people at either ends of the skill spectrum having lower or higher win rates). If you are winning more of your games, you should play better at better players until you start losing again (and vice versa). You should eventually hit an equilibrium where you are playing people you have about a 50% chance of beating.
    - LoSboccacc 6y ago
      most ranking put player in an oscillating loop around their equilibrium, often that 50% win rate is not because a 100% fun matches but because a sum of 50% unwinnable frustrating matches and 50% easy boring matches measuring win rate does shit like that and then most system double punish you for quitting the unwinnable matches that metric is possibly the second most frustrating aspect of online play
LoSboccacc 6y ago
idk that makes extremely hard to find matches in games with a smaller player base see war thunder, the simulation queue is a desert, high tier ships a wasteland, unless all the available player get forcibly lumped together matches will just not happen compare with stormworks too, most servers are empty in my timezone and the populated one as password protected or spawn limited, it wouldn't take much to get known and partecipare in their community but for working games the time commitment is simply impossible. same with arma3 I'd love to get into shack tac but timezone and commitments make it unavailable to me, and since most of the good players are sucked up in teams the public server are a mess of "what's left" of the community
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Matchmaking without custom servers/lobbies makes finding a match even harder, since a minimum amount of users in a specific ranking/skill level/ship tier/whatever must all be online and searching for a match at the same time. Custome servers and lobbies allow just one or two players to start, and it advertises to other players that they are available to play. The initial players just need to wait until more people show up, and can play more casual game modes or with bots or whatever until more people arrive.

ColeyG 6y ago

In certain communities, players will choose ranked vs. unranked almost always. I agree that a ranked + custom lobby model should exist though.

cortesoft 6y ago

The purpose of ranking systems is to try to create fair matches. I think ideally you wouldn't show the ranking to the player, just use it to create the match. With a large population, everyone should end up winning about half their games. That would be the sign of a successful ranking system.

ecdavis 6y ago
You're conflating ranking and matchmaking systems. A ranking system measures relative skill/performance levels. You can have a ranking system without using it for matchmaking.[0] I don't agree that a typical 50% win rate[1] indicates a successful matchmaking system. For one thing, creating fair matches is _a_ purpose of a matchmaking system, but not necessarily the _sole_ purpose. For another, that people win half their games on average says nothing about how fair the matches were. I think that fairness often gets prioritized over fun. Playing sports should be fun at all levels, but it's particularly important at the lower skill levels that the participants enjoy themselves. That's how sports grow and become cultural institutions. Being a low skill player in a silo of other low skill players is a decidedly un-fun experience that drives a lot of new players away from e-sports. A ranked matchmaking system could be designed with the express purpose of helping low skill players have fun and naturally develop into average skill players.[2] I wonder what such a system would look like. [0] See FiveThirtyEight's Elo ratings for NFL teams: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nfl-predictions/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nfl-predictions/ [1] However that's measured. [2] Under such a system fairness might be relegated to the seeding process for tournament play.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  > I don't agree that a typical 50% win rate Assuming there are no ties, and teams have an even number of players, a multiplayer competitive video game is going to be a zero sum game; for every winner, there is going to be a loser. While I agree that you it isn't the SOLE purpose of a matchmaking system, I do think a fair matchmaking system will end up with most players having a 50% win rate (with a few people at either ends of the skill spectrum having lower or higher win rates). If you are winning more of your games, you should play better at better players until you start losing again (and vice versa). You should eventually hit an equilibrium where you are playing people you have about a 50% chance of beating.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    most ranking put player in an oscillating loop around their equilibrium, often that 50% win rate is not because a 100% fun matches but because a sum of 50% unwinnable frustrating matches and 50% easy boring matches measuring win rate does shit like that and then most system double punish you for quitting the unwinnable matches that metric is possibly the second most frustrating aspect of online play

LoSboccacc 6y ago

idk that makes extremely hard to find matches in games with a smaller player base see war thunder, the simulation queue is a desert, high tier ships a wasteland, unless all the available player get forcibly lumped together matches will just not happen compare with stormworks too, most servers are empty in my timezone and the populated one as password protected or spawn limited, it wouldn't take much to get known and partecipare in their community but for working games the time commitment is simply impossible. same with arma3 I'd love to get into shack tac but timezone and commitments make it unavailable to me, and since most of the good players are sucked up in teams the public server are a mess of "what's left" of the community

HideousKojima 6y ago
Matchmaking without custom servers/lobbies makes finding a match even harder, since a minimum amount of users in a specific ranking/skill level/ship tier/whatever must all be online and searching for a match at the same time. Custome servers and lobbies allow just one or two players to start, and it advertises to other players that they are available to play. The initial players just need to wait until more people show up, and can play more casual game modes or with bots or whatever until more people arrive.