4 ms·

Isn't this better for the lower skilled players, who no longer get dominated by professionals?

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Yes. Winning in a game with two players/teams and one winner is by definition zero sum. You can't have some players win more without other players winning less. Asking for the difficulty of the game to be reduced for oneself fundamentally implies that you want the difficulty of the game to be increased for someone else. There is no other possibility. The most hilarious thing is when people ask that there be a ranked playlist with sbmm and an unranked playlist without. The one without, they assume, would be more favorable to them, since they would experience a random distribution of players (and they assume they are above average, naturally). But for players in the bottom decile of skill, unranked would have a dramatically worse experience than ranked! So they would leave for the ranked playlist. Now the new bottom decile of skill would be having a terrible experience in unranked, so they would leave, etc. By induction, unranked would quickly become depopulated. It is really tough to be a below-average player in a game without any matchmaking. You lose all the time and almost never have an impact. You can kiiinda get away with this as a developer in games that have very large teams. For example, World of Warships has no skill based matchmaking (although tier level is somewhat a proxy for skill and performs a bit of a weed-out of the lowest skill players in the higher tiers). There are people who play that game who have only a 30% winrate over a large number of games. This is in a 12v12 game where presumably things tend to average out in the mix of skills on each team, so having that negative of an impact on team performance is in some sense pretty impressive. The only thing difficult for me to understand is the resilience of the mentality involved in continuing to play that game if you are one of the way below average players. I would not have fun if I never had a positive impact on my team's performance. It's also worth noting that if WoWS had the playerbase to support it, they'd probably build SBMM too. But it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. The issue is that their monetization system requires what is effectively forty or fifty different queues (5 tier-based matching bands * 4 ship classes * 2-2.2 game modes, depending on whether ranked is active). Queue times can already be quite extended in some tiers and for some ship ship classes. Developing a system that continues with this alignment of tiers and classes and also substantially reduces skill gaps is probably unsolvable without a much large player base or a more complicated role selection system.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I don't know about World of Warships but in Warthunder you can get a lot of kills without meaningfully contributing to your team. Kills are very enjoyable though.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I don't know about World of Warships but in Warthunder you can get a lot of kills without meaningfully contributing to your team. Its harder in World of Warships because of the absence of respawns. Each kill has a bigger direct impact on team win/loss probability than in War Thunder.
alistairSH 6y ago
Yes. Also, why would a "pro" want to sandbag like this? I've been an amateur athlete most of my life and my goal was never to compete against known weaker athletes - there's no fun in that. Or, do these games lack the ability to spin up "practice" sessions fully under the control of the player? That seems like the real answer, and would mirror what athletes in meat-space do - train for weeks/months, then compete at well-timed intervals against the best (or, at least relatively equal, if you're doing age group amateur competitions).
- LanceH 6y ago
  Imagine you're a world class striker on your soccer team. You play against world class defenders and goalkeepers. It's exhausting because you have to play your top game, every time. Now, one day you decide to try out goalkeeper. You get to face world class competition because of your status as a striker. Two possible results: 1. You get discouraged and don't play the off positions. You only maximize. Maybe you get burned out because you never relax. 2. You do switch back and forth between things you are good/not good at. Your skill averages out and you play easy matches where you carry your team, alternated with impossible matches where you drag your team down. I know a lot of pros will have secondary accounts for things like this. Sometimes it gets viewed as sandbagging (and sometimes it is).
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    This is why I asked about practice sessions. Any professional e-sport should have some means for a pro to practice without: 1- engaging in actual public game play 2- sandbagging against weaker competition In your striker-wants-to-be-goalie situation, the wanna be goalie would practice against the clubs B team. He would not step into the WC as goalie. Nor would he shit up the local junior tournament while he tries things out.
    - LanceH 6y ago
      Practice. You were talking about practice... I'm sure all the esports games have a practice. But that really only satisfies the situation where you have full teams available. Also, a lot of pros make more money from playing the game without a team and streaming it on twitch or youtube.

Yes. Winning in a game with two players/teams and one winner is by definition zero sum. You can't have some players win more without other players winning less. Asking for the difficulty of the game to be reduced for oneself fundamentally implies that you want the difficulty of the game to be increased for someone else. There is no other possibility. The most hilarious thing is when people ask that there be a ranked playlist with sbmm and an unranked playlist without. The one without, they assume, would be more favorable to them, since they would experience a random distribution of players (and they assume they are above average, naturally). But for players in the bottom decile of skill, unranked would have a dramatically worse experience than ranked! So they would leave for the ranked playlist. Now the new bottom decile of skill would be having a terrible experience in unranked, so they would leave, etc. By induction, unranked would quickly become depopulated. It is really tough to be a below-average player in a game without any matchmaking. You lose all the time and almost never have an impact. You can kiiinda get away with this as a developer in games that have very large teams. For example, World of Warships has no skill based matchmaking (although tier level is somewhat a proxy for skill and performs a bit of a weed-out of the lowest skill players in the higher tiers). There are people who play that game who have only a 30% winrate over a large number of games. This is in a 12v12 game where presumably things tend to average out in the mix of skills on each team, so having that negative of an impact on team performance is in some sense pretty impressive. The only thing difficult for me to understand is the resilience of the mentality involved in continuing to play that game if you are one of the way below average players. I would not have fun if I never had a positive impact on my team's performance. It's also worth noting that if WoWS had the playerbase to support it, they'd probably build SBMM too. But it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. The issue is that their monetization system requires what is effectively forty or fifty different queues (5 tier-based matching bands * 4 ship classes * 2-2.2 game modes, depending on whether ranked is active). Queue times can already be quite extended in some tiers and for some ship ship classes. Developing a system that continues with this alignment of tiers and classes and also substantially reduces skill gaps is probably unsolvable without a much large player base or a more complicated role selection system.

imtringued 6y ago
I don't know about World of Warships but in Warthunder you can get a lot of kills without meaningfully contributing to your team. Kills are very enjoyable though.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I don't know about World of Warships but in Warthunder you can get a lot of kills without meaningfully contributing to your team. Its harder in World of Warships because of the absence of respawns. Each kill has a bigger direct impact on team win/loss probability than in War Thunder.

alistairSH 6y ago

Yes. Also, why would a "pro" want to sandbag like this? I've been an amateur athlete most of my life and my goal was never to compete against known weaker athletes - there's no fun in that. Or, do these games lack the ability to spin up "practice" sessions fully under the control of the player? That seems like the real answer, and would mirror what athletes in meat-space do - train for weeks/months, then compete at well-timed intervals against the best (or, at least relatively equal, if you're doing age group amateur competitions).

LanceH 6y ago
Imagine you're a world class striker on your soccer team. You play against world class defenders and goalkeepers. It's exhausting because you have to play your top game, every time. Now, one day you decide to try out goalkeeper. You get to face world class competition because of your status as a striker. Two possible results: 1. You get discouraged and don't play the off positions. You only maximize. Maybe you get burned out because you never relax. 2. You do switch back and forth between things you are good/not good at. Your skill averages out and you play easy matches where you carry your team, alternated with impossible matches where you drag your team down. I know a lot of pros will have secondary accounts for things like this. Sometimes it gets viewed as sandbagging (and sometimes it is).
- alistairSH 6y ago
  This is why I asked about practice sessions. Any professional e-sport should have some means for a pro to practice without: 1- engaging in actual public game play 2- sandbagging against weaker competition In your striker-wants-to-be-goalie situation, the wanna be goalie would practice against the clubs B team. He would not step into the WC as goalie. Nor would he shit up the local junior tournament while he tries things out.
  - LanceH 6y ago
    Practice. You were talking about practice... I'm sure all the esports games have a practice. But that really only satisfies the situation where you have full teams available. Also, a lot of pros make more money from playing the game without a team and streaming it on twitch or youtube.