Premades are ruining non-ranked warzones

[Doomsdaycomes]

You can't even keep your own argument straight, don't try representing mine.

 

Taken from Post 3534 on Page 354:

 

[*]For every pug that quits, that is one less person who's queuing up into regs. For every person less, that is X-amount of time that gets added to regs queue.

 

Essentially Less PuG's = Longer queues.

 

Now then, show me some posts where I've tripped up over my own arguments: Generally all of my posts either:

 

1) Say Matchmaking is the best option

2) Players have a responsibility for their own enjoyment.

 

Don't say things you can't back up.

 

Here's the pattern: at best, you're talking out of your butt. People who like debate don't like conversing with you because of the strong probability that someone who talks exclusively out of their butt, is probably doing it because they're not capable of contributing something more to the conversation. Like I've said before, the strategic thing to do is just give your argument enough rope to hang itself, but you're like a clumsy cat caught in a dozen nooses, but thinks it's caught a mouse. The real cruelty is to keep giving you the opportunity.

 

An error I've made for the last time, too. Bye Doomsday.

 

Oh, really?

 

How about you have the conviction to defend you arguments or leave the debate? Oh wait... you just did. Nice try comfty, but everyone can see you can't win against me so you hurl insults, duck, then run hoping no one will notice your posts have been tanked by your own logical fallacies and the bias you accuse others of having,

 

I accept your surrender. Never post here again unless you're willing to defend your arguments.

[MotorCityMan]

One possible solution would be to give every player who participates in warzones (even regular ones) an individual rating. This rating would be invisible to the player or anyone else, and would only be used internally by the server matchmaking service.

 

When composing teams for a match, the service would then do it's best to ensure the sum of individual players' ratings on both teams is roughly the same.

 

This would naturally deal with pro-level premades, as players playing in them would have very high ratings, so the system would tend to throw premades against other premades. This would also make PUG vs PUG games more fair, as scrubs would not be put against veterans. And all this without having to even consider whether a player joined solo or in a group(so it would not separate those two).

 

This very well might be an ideal solution. I suspect though, that it is also the most unlikely to be implemented.

Game companies are unwilling to assign rankings to unwilling players because it opens a Pandora's box of issues. Players will challenge every aspect of a ranking system more thoroughly than a team of O.J. Simpson lawyers. Witness the debates over the assignments of medals and class balance.

Individual rankings formulas would be a complete nightmare to figure out and apply accurately compared to the simple won lost ranked team system (which is entered into voluntarily).

I have mentioned before that WoW has designed a match making system for their queue which simply pits groups vs groups and fills in with solo players, leaving a larger pool of solo players to solo fill remaining battlegrounds. I don't know the details of how it works. I have heard from friends that in their experience it seems to make a significant difference, although solo players still end up in battlegrounds with groups on occasion. Blizzard has a much larger pool of players and other systems such as cross server queuing so I don't know if such a system would translate well to SWTOR. Something for Bioware to investigate, and I am sure they will at least look at it.

Edited June 24, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[sanchito]

so a question for the pro match making crowd; could you see mixed faction teams in order to help queue times? Or would that be game breaking from a lore point of view?

[Jadescythe]

This very well might be an ideal solution. I suspect though, that it is also the most unlikely to be implemented.

Game companies are unwilling to assign rankings to unwilling players because it opens a Pandora's box of issues. Players will challenge every aspect of a ranking system more thoroughly than a team of O.J. Simpson lawyers. Witness the debates over the assignments of medals.

Individual rankings formulas would be a complete nightmare to figure out and apply compared to the simple won lost ranked team system.

 

I don't think you could base it on anything other than wins/losses. If you do, it will just encourage people to focus on that one thing. Example: If medals improved your rating, people would do what is necessary to get the most medals and you'd have dual spec classes naturally getting higher ratings.

 

People may not like to rely on 7 other people for their rating, but ultimately, if you are better than everyone you are playing with, you'll win more games and keep moving up in the long run.

[Doomsdaycomes]

so a question for the pro match making crowd; could you see mixed faction teams in order to help queue times? Or would that be game breaking from a lore point of view?

 

I do think mix faction teams would be kind of against the point of the game. I choose faction X for a reason, etc...

 

That being said, if they were to implement some kind of mix faction PvE content hell ya PvP should get some mix faction content too.

 

I'd rather cross server queue's than mix faction though. Other's disagree.

[Arunas]

so a question for the pro match making crowd; could you see mixed faction teams in order to help queue times? Or would that be game breaking from a lore point of view?

 

It is the only way without cross server.

 

Consider how a server might try to get balanced teams if there are 16 people in queue, 2x4 premades and 8 soloers. Each player has internal rating and server would sort the players by them and put to each team so the team ratings are close. This would mean that there is never ever double premade vs pugs if the pug total rating is worse.

 

Cross faction is bad because you cannot mix and match then and if one side is more dominating on particular server and time of day nothing can be done here.

[cashogy_reborn]

who in this thread would be opposed to a robust, skill-based matchmaking system?

[Comfterbilly]

who in this thread would be opposed to a robust, skill-based matchmaking system?

 

A real one, or the piece of junk matchmaking system we're going to end up with if BW is foolish enough to pat premaders egos with the idea that the whole problem is "skill"?

 

What good is it at 3am anyway? Say there's a ranked 4-man roaming the dead queue, happens to me all the time, how is match-making going to keep solos from being stuck with them ALL NIGHT FRICKIN LONG?

 

Solo-toggle? Better.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Comfterbilly

[MotorCityMan]

who in this thread would be opposed to a robust, skill-based matchmaking system?

 

Not me, but I suspect you would need a team of MIT math professors, IBM senior coders, and a dedicated group of play testers working around the clock to implement a good one. And even then most of the players would disagree with it and think it was imposed upon them by ill willed, Machiavellian, insidious devs out to get them.

 

So I have been suggesting simpler and unfortunately less discriminate and more blunt solutions, such as preferentially matching group vs group if possible, filling in with solos, as wow currently is experimenting with.

Edited June 24, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[TonyDragonflame]

who in this thread would be opposed to a robust, skill-based matchmaking system?

 

Any matchmaking system will do not work, cuz queue time will be too long with it.

And there is no any cross-server queues in future.

 

So, there is only one simple solution - solo only queue, regular or ranked.

Yes, any other queue in regular with it will be long, but premades themselves destroy it, so they will waiting loooong now. Its the price. But solo players dont care about premaders, so good luck these guys with long queue. Make more friends, go play ranked, stop being bad, it is MMO

[cashogy_reborn]

Not me, but I suspect you would need a team of MIT math professors, IBM senior coders, and a dedicated group of play testers working around the clock to implement a good one. And even then most of the players would disagree with it and think it was imposed upon them by ill willed, Machiavellian, insidious devs out to get them.

 

So I have been suggesting simpler and unfortunately less discriminate and more blunt solutions, such as preferentially matching group vs group if possible, filling in with solos, as wow currently is experimenting with.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=593335

 

^ thats an algorithm i made in about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. it would probably take a few months for it to start working properly (as people have to fill in to their ratings), but it would certainly be a great long-term solution.

 

Any matchmaking system will do not work, cuz queue time will be too long with it.

And there is no any cross-server queues in future.

 

So, there is only one simple solution - solo only queue, regular or ranked.

Yes, any other queue in regular with it will be long, but premades themselves destroy it, so they will waiting loooong now. Its the price. But solo players dont care about premaders, so good luck these guys with long queue. Make more friends, go play ranked, stop being bad, it is MMO

 

actually, a skill-based matchmaking system would not result in drastically longer queue times. the PvP population would be the same, and assuming that players would eventually start to fill in a traditional bell curve, there would be ample number of players with rating similar to your own. you can also code the matchmaking to slowly expand the match curriculum if the queue time is starting to increase. say after 10 minutes you get thrown with whoever the next available people are.

 

the only "solutions" that would really impact queue times are those that split, or altogether remove, parts of the PvP population.

Edited June 24, 2013 by cashogy_reborn

[MotorCityMan]

I don't think you could base it on anything other than wins/losses. If you do, it will just encourage people to focus on that one thing. Example: If medals improved your rating, people would do what is necessary to get the most medals and you'd have dual spec classes naturally getting higher ratings.

 

People may not like to rely on 7 other people for their rating, but ultimately, if you are better than everyone you are playing with, you'll win more games and keep moving up in the long run.

 

You might be exactly right. Or not. I am not sure how this would account for both team play and solo play.

Edited June 24, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[Doomsdaycomes]

Any matchmaking system will do not work, cuz queue time will be too long with it.

And there is no any cross-server queues in future.

 

So, there is only one simple solution - solo only queue, regular or ranked.

Yes, any other queue in regular with it will be long, but premades themselves destroy it, so they will waiting loooong now. Its the price. But solo players dont care about premaders, so good luck these guys with long queue. Make more friends, go play ranked, stop being bad, it is MMO

 

So lemme get this straight. A group player who tells a PuG to improve their chances of winning (or "fair matching") is bad, elitist, pugstomping, etc...

 

But your complete and utter lack of care if group players aren't even allowed to play (Long queue times), that's okay?

 

Please clarify.

[MotorCityMan]

Any matchmaking system will do not work, cuz queue time will be too long with it.

And there is no any cross-server queues in future.

 

So, there is only one simple solution - solo only queue, regular or ranked.

Yes, any other queue in regular with it will be long, but premades themselves destroy it, so they will waiting loooong now. Its the price. But solo players dont care about premaders, so good luck these guys with long queue. Make more friends, go play ranked, stop being bad, it is MMO

 

Succinctly said.

Edited June 24, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[Doomsdaycomes]

So I have been suggesting simpler and unfortunately less discriminate and more blunt solutions, such as preferentially matching group vs group if possible, filling in with solos, as wow currently is experimenting with.

 

It's splitting hairs over which criteria (Skill vs Grouping) matchmaking is based on, but why isn't this the argument you lead with earlier instead of going on about Empirical Data, Conjecture, etc...

 

I'm glad we're in some agreement, but could you please stick with one solution you call best?

 

Other than that, yep I'd be fine with some kind of matchmaking as long as there isn't a hard barrier between groups.

[Doomsdaycomes]

A real one, or the piece of junk matchmaking system we're going to end up with if BW is foolish enough to pat premaders egos with the idea that the whole problem is "skill"?

 

What good is it at 3am anyway? Say there's a ranked 4-man roaming the dead queue, happens to me all the time, how is match-making going to keep solos from being stuck with them ALL NIGHT FRICKIN LONG?

 

Solo-toggle? Better.

 

Didn't you surrender already?

 

Let's take your example:

 

If there's a 4-man in the queue and every match, you're matched against them that means:

 

1 group (4)

12 pugs.

 

Matchmaking: Continues to match all 16 players as best it can. No best match possible, everyone get's a pop in a couple minutes

 

Solo-only option: 4 players (in group) is not enough for a match. Group queue get's no pop. 12 players (in solo bracket) is not enough for a match. Solo get's no pop.

 

Lose-Lose situation.

 

Try again.

[Comfterbilly]

/snip

 

Oh, therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre's the "add to your ignore list" option. I knew if you kept trolling me I would eventually tinker around and find it. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Comfterbilly

[Comfterbilly]

Any matchmaking system will do not work, cuz queue time will be too long with it.

And there is no any cross-server queues in future.

 

So, there is only one simple solution - solo only queue, regular or ranked.

Yes, any other queue in regular with it will be long, but premades themselves destroy it, so they will waiting loooong now. Its the price. But solo players dont care about premaders, so good luck these guys with long queue. Make more friends, go play ranked, stop being bad, it is MMO

 

I love this post ^

[MotorCityMan]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=593335

 

^ thats an algorithm i made in about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. it would probably take a few months for it to start working properly (as people have to fill in to their ratings), but it would certainly be a great long-term solution.

 

Very well might be. Because I don't know how a ratings system might be done, I might be over imagining the difficulties involved. I do know that it will call into question class balance, and I think back to thread after thread after thread that has been posted in this game and others in regards to that. Game companies have been struggling with it for years and according to many players, still haven't gotten it right. It might be especially difficult to reconcile solo ratings and team ratings. A certain class and or player might fare very poorly in solo pug play, but excel at team play. Not to mention having a variety of team mates.

But I allow there is a solution out there somewhere. Let's hope Bioware stumbles upon it.

Edited June 24, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[Doomsdaycomes]

So...

 

Everyone else can see Comfter doesn't want to actually debate or defend his points. Please add them to your ignore list then, so they can continue to believe in the fantasy that no one could possibly oppose their views.

 

 

In the mean time, I'll wait for anyone else to try and convince me solo-only options are the best solution to the PvP problem.

[Mccordrm]

This is the fix:

There are three options for PvP.

1. Solo. Self-explanatory: You go into queue and get put in a random PUG to PvP with against other random PUGS.

2. Group. You create your own 8-man group (not 4-man because there would still be PUG players which defeats the purpose) and go against other 8-man groups.

3. Groups with Expertise. The Expertise stat is ONLY relevant in these matches. And it shouldn't affect everything. I believe it should work like Augments- you choose what it strengthens: Crit chance, Damage Reduction, Alacrity, etc. In this fashion, Expertise adds to player diversity.

 

Now my reasoning. Players just getting started in PvP, or who aren't good at PvP, shouldn't be punished for it. The Expertise/Bolster mechanic does just that. It's not a reward for people who PvP a lot, it's punishment to those who don't. It's why PvP queues take so damn long to pop- people are tired of the "why bother" feeling you get. Same goes for Pre-mades in regular PvP matches.

 

The bonus to this system is that you now have a reason to do Ranked matches. Expertise Commendations can now be earned just like every other Commendation. You may do a story or hard mode Operation to earn Comms for the gear you'll need in the harder stuff (Next Tier). Thus, you go into Group matches to start earning your Expertise Commendations. You get your Expertise Augment (for lack of a better term) and add it to your equipment. However, in Group PvP matches, that Expertise will give absolutely no bonus. It's not until you enter a Group with Expertise match that you'll receive any benefit.

 

Yes, it will take time before enough people are geared and queuing for Group with Expertise matches. But so what. The same can be said of 16-man Nightmare Operations, too. And to speed the process along, there needs to be a benefit to doing the Group with Expertise matches. Give a nod to MOBA games and have actual League-style play. Give Titles to monthly winners, or Cartel Coins, or something. Hell, create a new adventure (Operation, Flashpoint, etc) which can only be done by Group with Expertise winners. Stuff like that.

 

Anyhow, just my thinking on the matter.

 

-Rabbit

The Wolf Pack

The Ebon Hawk

[Doomsdaycomes]

This is the fix:

There are three options for PvP.

1. Solo. Self-explanatory: You go into queue and get put in a random PUG to PvP with against other random PUGS.

2. Group. You create your own 8-man group (not 4-man because there would still be PUG players which defeats the purpose) and go against other 8-man groups.

3. Groups with Expertise. The Expertise stat is ONLY relevant in these matches. And it shouldn't affect everything. I believe it should work like Augments- you choose what it strengthens: Crit chance, Damage Reduction, Alacrity, etc. In this fashion, Expertise adds to player diversity.

 

The issue with the above is:

 

Where do groups of 2, 3, or 4 belong?

 

In our current system, there is room for single players, groups of up to 4, and groups of 8. I believe in this thread, most of the players agree that currently the 1-4 queue has an unhealthy problem. Lower Competitive players (Since the "skill" word makes certain people rage) vs Higher Competitive players generally makes a lopsided match.

 

The solution then, must server as many players as it does now (1, 2-4, and 8) while addressing the core of the problem. Primarily two solutions come up: Matchmaking based on a criteria, or a Single only bracket.

 

The solution you provide doesn't server group players (save for groups of 8) and doesn't target the heart of the problem: Separating/Sorting Competitive players from "Casuals."

[Mccordrm]

Yes, actually it does separate the groups. If you want to be a "competitive" player, you have to put together a competitive group.

 

And as for groups of 2-7 people, too bad. The point is that you can't have it both ways. If you want "team" matches, then understand that a team in PvP is 8 people. That's not up for debate or discussion. My system would keep the competitive people playing together, and the "casuals" playing together without getting in each other's way.

 

And this is an MMO. If you've only got a couple of friends to group with... you're doing it wrong.

[Doomsdaycomes]

Yes, actually it does separate the groups. If you want to be a "competitive" player, you have to put together a competitive group.

 

And as for groups of 2-7 people, too bad. The point is that you can't have it both ways. If you want "team" matches, then understand that a team in PvP is 8 people. That's not up for debate or discussion. My system would keep the competitive people playing together, and the "casuals" playing together without getting in each other's way.

 

And this is an MMO. If you've only got a couple of friends to group with... you're doing it wrong.

 

...

 

For a moment I though this might get fruitful, or at least interesting.

 

*Sighs.*

 

Let's explore:

 

Why do you think there should be a change at all?

[Mccordrm]

Because a change is necessary.

 

Giving one group gun, and the other knives, and expecting the Knife group to have fun is stupid. Yet that's exactly what they've done with Expertise. And Bolster? Let's review: If you don't have Expertise, we're going to give it to you, anyhow. So.. what's the point?

 

My system gets around all of that. If you don't want to play in the "big leagues", you do not have to; but more importantly, you're not punished for it. And if you do, then you'll be doing so against like-minded individuals. Simple. Easy. Logical.