Ranking pilots to make matches more even

[Krimson_Knight]

So I am just getting into GSF and absolutely loving it. I have had some games that were very close and others that were.......very very lopsided. I noticed during those tilted matches the side that was ahead had pilots with more unlocked ships.....not that that means they are good pilots or anything, but just stating something I noticed.

 

 

Would it be possible to start ranking pilots based on damage done ? or maybe a "super stat" that encompasses dmg/kills/medals or something of the nature.

 

Now this last suggestion may tick some ppl off but hey, it's just a thought. If we ranked pilots and split them evenly across teams, some people would have to fly for other faction :-D Like Battlefront...... Is this possible to have a pub player in an imp ship >?

[caederon]

Unfortunately, there are two large stumbling blocks that make it impossible for GSF to implement any sort of ranking system.

 

1. Small Player Population.

There aren't enough people playing for any sort of matching algorithm (including the existing one) to sort people onto fair teams. If you have enough people queuing to start a match, that's usually the total pool of people queuing. Especially on TEH, you're not going to find a lot of players queuing for GSF. Harbinger at peak hours sometimes has enough to have two concurrent matches running. That's about as good as it gets anymore.

 

2. Developer Indifference

There are no developers working on GSF content or bug fixes. This seems unlikely to change in any significant way. The game has existed in a largely unaltered state for almost two years now. Bioware decided it was not worth their effort to support or update GSF. The whims of fate may change this, but likely not.

 

My suggestion to you is to play on either Harbinger, Jedi Covenant, or Shadowlands. Those are the three servers you're most likely to get frequent matches around prime-time for their timezone. Find veterans to group with so you can end up in more competitive games. Good luck!

 

- Despon

[Lavaar]

So I am just getting into GSF and absolutely loving it. I have had some games that were very close and others that were.......very very lopsided. I noticed during those tilted matches the side that was ahead had pilots with more unlocked ships.....not that that means they are good pilots or anything, but just stating something I noticed.

 

 

Would it be possible to start ranking pilots based on damage done ? or maybe a "super stat" that encompasses dmg/kills/medals or something of the nature.

 

Now this last suggestion may tick some ppl off but hey, it's just a thought. If we ranked pilots and split them evenly across teams, some people would have to fly for other faction :-D Like Battlefront...... Is this possible to have a pub player in an imp ship >?

 

This is a great idea, but unfortunately Despon is right. With that being said, welcome to GSF! Be sure to join the gsf chat channel by typing /cjoin gsf to find some groups, which can help even the odds during those tough times.

[Eldarion_Velator]

The biggest problem with the ranking idea (because it's something many of us have considered at some point) has to do with the way GSF is currently set up. For a variety of reasons, GSF statistics/information is character-specific, i.e. does not aggregate legacy-wide stats. Therefore, ace pilots can (and have) started up brand-new toons with stock ships (or queued with relatively-unknown toons) and still wiped the floor with them. A ranking system that isn't legacy-wide would be unable to identify alts of pilots who are in fact aces.

 

On top of this, the relatively small queued population restricts what can be done about match balance; if each match had a range of character lifetime requisition earned, the already-small queued population would get pops even less frequently due to the additional division of the queued population.

 

In my opinion, aside from following self-imposed "rules of warfare," there isn't a whole lot that can be done about match balance.

[Verain]

The game does appear to matchmake based on some character stats already, but the game is pretty limited. If this was cross server and there were enough players to fill ten pubside groups and nine impside groups at a given time, the matchmaker would have a pretty easy job of it. Instead, it does not- at most it can choose the correct player or two to exclude from a match being made, and can pick better or worse based on the side that is the limiting reagent.

 

 

Now, if the game considered each group (with a solo queue as a group of 1) as an independent entity, you could make an argument for that quite easily. This would allow the matchmaker, which might easily have twenty total players in queue, to make a match that is less one sided.

 

In any event, the thing you are asking- pilots being ranked- is pretty much already real to some extent. That "ranking" is just done internally by the matchmaker and at no other place, and probably isn't as clever as, say, an arena rank. But even with all that, you'd still end up pushing veterans, pilots, newbies, and foodships together almost at random during many of the times when there aren't enough to make great matches.

 

Obviously I'm assuming that the queue would never force people to sit out because they are "too good" or anything- any of that "separate queue" type idea can go die on fire.