I am 100% convinced now that matchmaking is not a thing

[Verain]

I've been on record numerous times defending matchmaking. The system doesn't normally have a lot of people to work with, so I get if it does strange stuff. Mostly, if two premades are queued and a wargame pops, one will be on each side. And mostly it will try to match via SOME method.

 

 

But today on Bastion, we had up to four groups going, and we rarely got even pops, and never got Emp+Emp v Pub+Pub. For whatever reason, it would do stuff like "double emp premade versus 8 republic pugs" at the same time as "single republic premade versus 8 emp pugs".

 

I would love if a dev would check to see if there's a problem here where it weights something crazier than others.

[Delta_V]

Let's not forget the Wargames where a bunch of vets get stacked up against all two-shippers from the same faction. I get it when strange things happen in Pub vs. Imp, since there's not a lot Matchmaking can do sometimes. But in same-faction matches, I've repeatedly been matched up w/ a Pub premade against a bunch of Pub newbs, despite having 4/5 Mastered ships in my bar. If Matchmaking was working, the solo-queued vets like myself should have ended up flying against the premade, instead of with them.

[Kalphitis]

I can't find the thread, but not long ago there was a post showing developer comments, and they specifically said that the current matchmaking system was quote: "Solid".

 

This has always confused me. It has always been apparent to me that a matchmaking system/algorithm simply does not exist in this game.

 

What happens: The game selects players to form games as quickly as possible. There is no consideration given to amount of ships owned, GSF play time, total lifetime req, or anything. If there is, it is not functioning properly.

 

Today's events only solidified what we already knew. The lack of a matchmaking system is most obvious when you're in a same-faction GSF game. I can't tell you how many times there is a Pub team with 7 veterans, and the other Pub team is all new '2-ship' players. This creates the obvious question: "Why not put 3 of those veterans on the other team, matchmaking system?"

 

Bioware should do us a 'Solid' and fix it

Edited May 3, 2014 by Kalphitis

[General_Brass]

Depending on where you play the lack of matchmaking becomes more or less apparent. But for people on servers where you get a fair number of faction vs same faction it's been pretty obvious the matchmaker doesn't do much of anything. Re: Dev Comment: They also said GSF is healthy. Edited May 3, 2014 by General_Brass

[Storm-Cutter]

IMHO there never *was* any/much matchmaking - therefore IT IS working as intended.

 

If you had to wait for several hours to get a very well balanced matchup - wouldn't you be QQ-ing here as much?

 

Stomp the Newbs, or get farmed by the vets.... You earn rep whatever - based mostly on how you contributed. Matchmaking is rather over-rated. If you're always winning or losing, switch to the other faction.

And there are some 2-ship aces out there. - Not many granted, but don't just dismiss a small hanger as 'no-skill and no mastered' ships.

 

Apologies if I sound kinda blunt, but that's how it is.

[Verain]

If you had to wait for several hours to get a very well balanced matchup - wouldn't you be QQ-ing here as much?

 

DERP I GOT FARMED BY ACES WAAAH

 

Read what I wrote. We had an event on Bastion, with multiple premades simul queuing on both sides. Do you get this? We effing queued at the same time, we voice coordinated so we could play good matches against each other.

 

Instead, MANY of the matches became: Emp team A + Emp team B versus pub 2-ship nublets. Rep team A versus Emp 2-ship nublets. Rep team B no pop.

 

Do you see how there were enough people there, with OBVIOUS HINTS (premade, full hangar, millions of req) such that any sensible matchmaking system MIGHT EVEN ONCE put EmpA+EmpB versus RepA+RepB?

 

The few games we did have felt like we just got LUCKY to actually get matched.

 

 

This isn't about like if I'm the only one on. Of course I need a pop, and I'm gonna eat them baby food ships. I don't care about that. This is, we gave that matchmaking thing its paces, and it flopped hard.

 

Apologies if I sound kinda blunt, but that's how it is.

 

Learn to read.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Verain

[Ramalina]

It could be that this is a result of a fairly simple "first in first out" type system, especially if it's not allowed to shuffle players around once the have been slotted into a forming group.

 

Sorting so that the queue pops at close to the maximum theoretical rate for current waitlists, ensuring that no single player gets screwed by sitting in queue for three days straight with no pop, and balancing groups as well as possible under those constraints isn't all that easy.

 

"But I could sort better than they do by hand," you cry. Maybe, but how long would it take you to sort groups for each battle, especially if multiple battles are popping. While you're at it, write out an algorithm/flowchart for the decision-making steps you use to get your better result.

 

We've all seen really bad matchmaking where we know better results could have been achieved. Making an algorithm that gets those results without also creating obscenely slow queues when things are slow might not be all that easy though.

 

GSF matchmaking:

Could be better, definitely.

Needs fixing, maybe.

Worth the resources needed to fix properly, maybe not.

[Verain]

It could be that this is a result of a fairly simple "first in first out" type system, especially if it's not allowed to shuffle players around once the have been slotted into a forming group.

 

If it's so rigid that it can't handle the idea of there being 20ish people in queue on each side, 13-16 of which are queued with 5 mastered ships and a couple COMPLETE ships per, versus a bunch of 2-ship noobs, and come up with "maybe the premades should be against each other, given that they queued within two seconds of each other", then let me say: it isn't matchmaking at all.

 

It's just going with what is there. Hence, my title: matchmaking is not a thing.

 

"But I could sort better than they do by hand," you cry. Maybe, but how long would it take you to sort groups for each battle, especially if multiple battles are popping. While you're at it, write out an algorithm/flowchart for the decision-making steps you use to get your better result.

 

 

Probably it could be done better, yes. Given what we saw today, yes, I'm sure an amateur could come up with a better setup (and I'm no amateur).

 

But, I think it's not that. I think that something may actually be wrong with the algo, like it isn't doing its thing under situations like I describe above, or it weights time in queue wildly high. Normally I'm willing to cut it slack- I can tell that there's only 1 game going, or they are 2 and they are offset in time. Maybe there's a situation they could address, where there's not enough people in queue at time X (aka, each side has a bunch of food ships queued, but not enough to pop). Then suddenly there ARE enough to pop, but putting the foodships against each other still doesn't make a full group, and the food has priority because they've been lined up to be eaten for a long time. So it just pushes out what it can such that the food gets to zone in and play.

 

 

If that's what it's doing, it isn't matchmaking- that is my point!

[Kalphitis]

We've all seen really bad matchmaking where we know better results could have been achieved. Making an algorithm that gets those results without also creating obscenely slow queues when things are slow might not be all that easy though.

 

GSF matchmaking:

Could be better, definitely.

Needs fixing, maybe.

Worth the resources needed to fix properly, maybe not.

 

No.

 

Creating a functional AI in GSF to allow single player games could be difficult, I get that. Cross-server queues could be difficult and possibly expensive to maintain, I get that.

 

This is not something that would slow down queue's or require additional server capabilities. It should be crazy easy to implement/fix/change.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Kalphitis

[General_Brass]

 

GSF matchmaking:

Could be better, definitely.

Needs fixing, Absolutely.

Worth the resources needed to fix properly? only if you want more people to play the game.

 

Fixed that.

 

Seriously if you are willing to eliminate group queuing matchmaking becomes pretty simple. Just need a flag for people who get bumped in one match to have priority in the next match. Your ratio of blowouts:balanced matches will go down from 5:1 to closer to 1:1

 

If you want to allow people to queue as a group, that's fine just tell them they have a lower priority and will only be matched when the opposing team is considered to present a valid challenge.

[Verain]

If you want to allow people to queue as a group, that's fine just tell them they have a lower priority and will only be matched when the opposing team is considered to present a valid challenge.

 

This isn't about that, and I don't care. I'm not willing to not get pops ever. This isn't about that, but feel free to turn it into the same cry thread you've posted like a zillion times where you want players who play the game to not be allowed to.

[DamascusAdontise]

(as a pre-face, please don't turn this into another anti group rant. Suffice to say its in the game currently, were not debating what "if's" - were positing that there might be something wonky with the MM algorithm etc since it didn't seem to work today)

 

So ill step in a little bit here, having seen some of the weirdness today as well.

 

For instance we had a 4 man group and a 2 man group queuing at the same time as a similarly sized republic force - voice coordinated (pretty much the Cadillac of queues, really trying to get it right) The result was absurdly difficult to get right, 50% of the time it did not work.

 

In the wargames, it ended up with our 2 man + 2-3 ship people (mostly 2 in some cases) vs the 4 man + random 3-5 shippers and other pilots I've seen do well before. The result was exactly as you would think, sure it was fun for me and Sanic since were taking it semi-serious to start with, but the other people on our team surely didn't appreciate being the butt of a MM joke.

 

I have been a big supporter of MM as well saying its the amount of players, and while this can still be part of the problem, I don't think its all thats going on. Not sure if they already do this but id love to see a focused study on MM (player pool size vs match quality) it should increase but today it did weird things.

 

IMO with as many people as we had along with the timing it should have been very easy for MM to sync everything up. We definitely had a more than usual amount of players so theoretically MM should have produced well balanced matches. But in reality it didn't seem to take ships in hanger, or gsf experience into account at all (or very little at least)

 

Felt very random to me *shrug*

Edited May 4, 2014 by DamascusAdontise

[General_Brass]

This isn't about that, and I don't care. I'm not willing to not get pops ever. This isn't about that, but feel free to turn it into the same cry thread you've posted like a zillion times where you want players who play the game to not be allowed to.

 

LOL.

 

I love the way you equate,

 

"If you want to gather up good players into a group, you won't be paired against people who have little to no chance of fighting back" with not being allowed to play.

 

What you wouldn't be allowed to do is spoil the game for other people. Of course, it seems most pvpers aren't happy if they haven't skewed the game so badly that people leave in disgust before it's done.

 

Edit: I'll put it even simpler, don't expect the game to provide matchmaking if you insist on screwing with the process.

Edited May 4, 2014 by General_Brass

[DamascusAdontise]

LOL.

 

I love the way you equate,

 

"If you want to gather up good players into a group, you won't be paired against people who have little to no chance of fighting back" with not being allowed to play.

 

What you wouldn't be allowed to do is spoil the game for other people. Of course, it seems most pvpers aren't happy if they haven't skewed the game so badly that people leave in disgust before it's done.

 

I don't have time for this but: google "constructive debate" and then re-evaluate the bulk of your posts. This is a constructive debate, citing personal experiences, take your blatant hate mongering and nonsensical garbage elsewhere please. If you have something to add about MM then by all means continue, otherwise shoo troll shooo!

[General_Brass]

I don't have time for this but: google "constructive debate" and then re-evaluate the bulk of your posts. This is a constructive debate, citing personal experiences, take your blatant hate mongering and nonsensical garbage elsewhere please. If you have something to add about MM then by all means continue, otherwise shoo troll shooo!

 

And I don't have time to deal with crap from pvper's whose sole goal is to be able to have one sided matches where they beat on noobs that don't have a chance in hell of fighting back, leave the match in the middle and never come back.

 

And I will repeat, don't expect matchmaking if you want to screw with the process. You either have a third party making the matches or you have crap. What we have now is crap, and it's why GSF is never going to move forward.

Edited May 4, 2014 by General_Brass

[tunewalker]

And I don't have time to deal with crap from pvper's whose sole goal is to be able to have one sided matches where they beat on noobs that don't have a chance in hell of fighting back.

 

And I will repeat, don't expect matchmaking if you want to screw with the process. You either have a third party making the matches or you have crap. What we have now is crap, and it's why GSF is never going to move forward.

 

what you fail to understand is some people like to group up. They like to group up with people they know because they like human interaction. They like to group up with people who like to do what they like to do. In pvp the regulars group up because they ARE all regulars, so they go hey i see you a lot lets play together kind of thing.

 

The only thing they are against is not being able to get in a que because there is ONLY 1 group thus they cant play. If there is another group we would all prefer match making WORKS and thus allow us to play premade vs premade.

[Verain]

LOL.

 

You just always post this junk man. You don't want good players to be able to play. Look at you- "if you get a group, organize, and are ready to go... then you shouldn't even get pops. Hah! That'll show you!"

 

"If you want to gather up good players into a group, you won't be paired against people who have little to no chance of fighting back" with not being allowed to play.

 

Those things are equal exactly. If I'm in queue with three friends and it doesn't give us the pop, which is what you want, and there's no other groups to queue next to, then that's the same thing.

 

What you wouldn't be allowed to do is spoil the game for other people. Of course, it seems most pvpers aren't happy if they haven't skewed the game so badly that people leave in disgust before it's done.

 

Spoil the game? It's not my fault they don't have ships and their pvp strategy is to float slowly firing rapid fire laser. I shouldn't have to sit on fleet watching them get pops when I can't.

 

 

That isn't what this thread is about. This thread is about, even WHEN the matchmaking system has people to make matches with, it falls apart. Not what to do when there's no matches to be made, or organize the game to protect the egos of people who clearly don't care enough to type, learn to play, have a strat, have ships, or req up at all. My gripe is when it COULD provide a better match, which is seldom, it generally doesn't.

 

 

Your complaint is that good players shouldn't get pops, ever.

[General_Brass]

what you fail to understand is some people like to group up. They like to group up with people they know because they like human interaction. They like to group up with people who like to do what they like to do. In pvp the regulars group up because they ARE all regulars, so they go hey i see you a lot lets play together kind of thing.

 

The only thing they are against is not being able to get in a que because there is ONLY 1 group thus they cant play. If there is another group we would all prefer match making WORKS and thus allow us to play premade vs premade.

 

I understand perfectly well people like to group up with friends.If the game were larger and so many people weren't being discouraged from playing by horribly negative first impressions, it wouldn't be a problem. When bad matches are the exception and not the rule, most people can handle the occasional really bad match. As things stand bad matches are more common than good ones by a wide margin and that is not going to grow the game or get dev resources for anything.

[General_Brass]

 

Your complaint is that good players shouldn't get pops, ever.

 

Yes because I don't want pops. I'll say it again, I love the way you go from "Teams should not be completely one sided" to " good players shouldn't get pops, ever."

[tunewalker]

I understand perfectly well people like to group up with friends.If the game were larger and so many people weren't being discouraged from playing by horribly negative first impressions, it wouldn't be a problem. When bad matches are the exception and not the rule, most people can handle the occasional really bad match. As things stand bad matches are more common than good ones by a wide margin and that is not going to grow the game or get dev resources for anything.

 

 

well as you said the game isnt large enough. If there are multiple premades then yes it should premades vs premades. newbs vs newbs. If that is NOT possible then it still should NOT prevent a premade from getting a que. If it DID then NO ONE newb or other wise would get games as there are not enough players playing to start a match at all. That kills new people coming in faster then bad games. People dont like waiting in que forever for ANYTHING. This is what helped kill ranked WZ, they just werent popping.

[General_Brass]

 

 

Spoil the game? It's not my fault they don't have ships and their pvp strategy is to float slowly firing rapid fire laser. I shouldn't have to sit on fleet watching them get pops when I can't.

 

I think that sums up our divide. You think it's ok for groups of maxxed out vets to go in and have wholesale slaughter of players who's knowledge of the game is "to float slowly firing rapid fire laser." and I don't. This is why ground PvP has level brackets, bolster and ranked.

Edited May 4, 2014 by General_Brass

[Kalphitis]

For what it's worth Brass, I think there is something to your argument regarding people in groups not getting queue preference all the time since it just lets them slaughter new players faster.

 

However, that doesn't change the fact that the matchmaking system isn't working to match veteran players against each other, which is the point of this thread.

 

Maybe take your argument to another thread.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Kalphitis

[Sidenti]

 

But seriously. What are you guys looking for out of the matchmaker algo? I rolled some new meat for 2XP weekend, played a dozen GSF matches - seemed rather balanced to me. I think I ran into one opposing premade the entire time and that was on a Saturday morning (historically a low point for GSF pop on TEH).

 

Random complaints are all well and good, but I've found programmers tend to respond better to information that tells them what players WANT, instead of what they DON'T want.

 

So. There's three pages of what you DON'T want. What's something you DO want to see with regard to matchmaking? In other words, what's the ideal queue for YOU? -bp

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I have noticed, at least in war games, that sometimes it does seem to stack newbies heavily on one team and vets on the other. So it does appear that MM is not really weighing things properly.

[Kalphitis]

So. There's three pages of what you DON'T want. What's something you DO want to see with regard to matchmaking? In other words, what's the ideal queue for YOU? -bp

 

Did you not read the OP? I think it's pretty clear. If you can't figure it out after reading it a second time, not sure what to tell you....can't make it any clearer than it already is.

 

Disregard the second page, it's just pointless QQ.