Time to dicuss the matchmaker?

[HrRav]

With the balancing updates in 5.5, the server mergers and the new map, I would say that GSF is now more fun to play than ever before. It is great that Bioware is giving some attention to this part of the game and I hope that they will continue to think of us. My top priority would be a new game mode; however, a more realistic request would perhaps be to have a look on the matchmaker, as this is something that could also be beneficial to ground pvp as well.

 

Although the share of balanced matches has increased after the mergers, it is still common that you play a sequence of matches like this:

 

1. Republic crushes imperials in team deathmatch (50-10).

2. Republic crushes imperials in domination (1000 - 150)

3. Imperials crushes republic in team deathmatch (50 - 5).

etc.

 

I think that the problem could be that the matchmaker gives too much priority to start a new match. Sure, it is nice that a new match pops directly after you have queued again from your last match, but I would not mind waiting a few minutes for another ongoing match to end if that would improve the balance of the matches.

[ALaggyGrunt]

The time to discuss a matchmaker was in beta. We don't have the playerbase for it to work meaningfully any more.

[Danalon]

It's the same unbalanced-ness as in ground PvP. I don't expect anything to happen. Especially not for GSF with only 1-2 simulataneous matches on most servers.

[Stellarcrusade]

Your problem of most wars being meaningless face-rolls is not so much from the lack of a match-making algorithm, and more a product of people who do not want a fair fight loading one team. I don't mean premades are bad, but when you get a premade of super veterans on any 1 team, they will almost never lose - why play? So if you are suggesting a matchmaker algo, the only way it would work is if it worked on an individual level and split up premades in cases where the premade is too buff compared to the rest of the players in the queue. But those who do not want any challenge or competition would whine and complain with that type of mechanism.

 

What would be nice, is if the game had a built in war voice channel, and true individual match-making. Every war would be balanced somewhat closely and you'd be put automatically in the voice channel of your team (making each team sort of a premade). And for the complainers, you'd still get matched with your buddies, but sometimes against also.

 

So, never going to happen, call it lack of quality developers, call it limited resources, or whatever. So the best you can hope for is that the uber-veteran premades grow a pair and split sides (2 on each side) when they are dominating. (it happens, there are a few that want to keep the matchups close to actually have a challenge, those people are the absolute best).

[Flusssaeure]

Your problem of most wars being meaningless face-rolls is not so much from the lack of a match-making algorithm, and more a product of people who do not want a fair fight loading one team. I don't mean premades are bad, but when you get a premade of super veterans on any 1 team, they will almost never lose - why play? So if you are suggesting a matchmaker algo, the only way it would work is if it worked on an individual level and split up premades in cases where the premade is too buff compared to the rest of the players in the queue. But those who do not want any challenge or competition would whine and complain with that type of mechanism./QUOTE]

 

You got it backwards, not Premades are the problem people only showing up with no intent to actually playing the game are the problem.

 

Get a game where five team mates of you select a bomber in a TDM just to hide in a corner and do nothing. Do you really think that anyone is good enough when in a 8 versus 8 only 3 people a really fighting so that the opposing team only needs to focus this three players down can win a 3 versus 8? After I primarily fly on the week side of my server I was often enough one of the three that I can tell you that games where the opponent has the time and room to send two scouts to look where an individual player is and as soon as they find you you have the attentaion of the three opposing gunships because there is nothing else to shoot at are basicly unwinable.

 

Then get four to six people on your team that can't do 5K damage in a TDM but consinder anyone doing more than 10K damage a cheater and start to leave the game when they saw people that can do 10K+ damage regualary so that you spend half the match with fewer people because you waiting for backfills. Don't beleave that those people exist? Ask Despon who had a run off with some of this people on T3-M4.

 

And these are just two examples I could go on and on with self-destructors, people who instead of playing complain half the match in OPs chat with big wall of text that I anounced tensor at the beginning of the game and they don't know what a tensor is, or people that defend a satelite afk with a five man group when our team has only one satellite and needs a second to win the game but then lose the satelite at the first opportunity because they were afk.

 

Premade are not the problem, premades are the solution to reduce the number of the kind of players mentoined above on your team. And no I don't play in Premades most of the time, I solo - Q most of the time, thats why I have seen things like the ones mentoined above first hand. Of course every one was new at some point and made some mistakes back then but there is a difference between makeing mistakes because you are new and not showing any efford at all. And at least on my server the number of players not showing any efford at all outnumbers the number of players in premades by far.

[caederon]

But those who do not want any challenge or competition would whine and complain with that type of mechanism.

Or maybe the ones who do not want any challenge or competition are the five players per match, on average, who cannot add a single kill to the ledger?

 

I've been performing a statistical analysis of GSF matches, recording stats from every match I played from 11/30 until now. So far I'm at 119 matches recorded, spread out roughly evenly over all five servers, nearly all of them solo-queue. The numbers aren't moving a whole lot at this point, so despite wanting a bigger sample size (which I will continue to record) I think it's valid to discuss them.

 

You cannot matchmake in a game where a large percentage of the players do not care to learn the game or even whether they are playing the game. When they can get their non-GSF points through not playing, you end up with numbers like this:

 

(for the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to the scoreboard leader in Damage or Kills as the Ace)

 

Average Damage done...

64397 - Ace

19308 - Average non-ace

 

Average Kills scored...

11 - Ace

02 - Average non-ace

 

Average number of Zero-kill players per game: 5

 

Win % when Enemy team has more Zero-kill players than Allied team...

89.66% - Domination

93.10% - Deathmatch

 

When teams are populated by multiple players that cannot manage a single kill, they usually lose. A basic game skill like 'shooting the enemy' turns out to be very consequential. If your team lacks people who can shoot the enemy, you are very likely to lose.

 

The great part of this is that anyone can learn to shoot the enemy. You don't have to possess catlike reflexes to exceed 20k damage or land more than 2 kills in a match. You do have to care enough to actually play the game you're participating in, and I am sure CXP farmers and other anchors are not reading this... but to those that are, focus on improving your individual skills and tactical awareness.

 

The only way 'the matchmaker' gets better is if there are more quality players to place in matches.

 

- Despon

[RickDagles]

Yep Despon is right. It's often the feeders that determine who wins the game.

 

I think this is most obvious in 4v4 premade vs premade games. I've played in so many of these games where the aces on each side are relatively similar in skill and yet the game isn't close. One player makes a huge difference.

Edited December 13, 2017 by RickDagles

[LasagnaSurfer]

It would be best if groups were not prioritized. Edited December 15, 2017 by LasagnaSurfer

[HrRav]

My point was simply that if there are around twenty pilots playing on each side---which is not uncommon on my server (Darth Malgus)---it should be possible for the matchmaking algorithm to set up fairly balanced games. But the algorithm seems to have too much emphasis on short queue times and giving priority to premades and the result is that there can be one game with a republic premade crushing an empire team with one or two solo-queuing veterans and bunch of zerokillers at the same time as there is another match going on where an empire premade is crushing a republic team.

 

Sure, other nights there is only one side that has a premade and there is not enough skilled pilots on the other side to match them and no matchmaking algorithm in the world can solve that. It is just disturbing that the matchmaker frequently failes to create good competitive fights even when there are enough players to choose from.

[HrRav]

And yes, 4v4 matches with a counterpart to the ground game grouped rank would probably help as it would give the best players a queue of their own.

[LordFell]

And yes, 4v4 matches with a counterpart to the ground game grouped rank would probably help as it would give the best players a queue of their own.

To some degree, it's difficult for the game to give true rankings. Like... let's say the game wants to place 2 aces, four "genuine flyers" and 2 zero-killers in a match. I think.... by some metrics that game would consider me an ace. I've been flying a long time, most of the ships in my hanger are Mastered, I've scored Aces in matches (infrequently) and am frequently "promoted" to Ops Leader.

 

...but I would NOT agree that I'm an Ace. I belong in that middle, "genuine flyer" group. I had a match last week though, where I scored 11 kills and 9 assists. Did I have a good flight? Probably... also, did I gorge on zero-kill feeders? Also, probably.

 

The presence of CXP farmers is skewing our numbers.

[Drakkolich]

To some degree, it's difficult for the game to give true rankings. Like... let's say the game wants to place 2 aces, four "genuine flyers" and 2 zero-killers in a match. I think.... by some metrics that game would consider me an ace. I've been flying a long time, most of the ships in my hanger are Mastered, I've scored Aces in matches (infrequently) and am frequently "promoted" to Ops Leader.

 

...but I would NOT agree that I'm an Ace. I belong in that middle, "genuine flyer" group. I had a match last week though, where I scored 11 kills and 9 assists. Did I have a good flight? Probably... also, did I gorge on zero-kill feeders? Also, probably.

 

The presence of CXP farmers is skewing our numbers.

 

The only thing the matchmaker looks at is highest requisitioned ship (Highest being mastered), numbers of games played on the character and how long you were in queue.

 

Because of this if a player can't hit anything at all but has played 1000 games and another player has a 95% win rate and like 10 kill/death ratio but has only played 500 games. The matchmaker considers the 1000 games player "better".

[HrRav]

The only thing the matchmaker looks at is highest requisitioned ship (Highest being mastered), numbers of games played on the character and how long you were in queue.

 

So what should the matchamker look at then? I would suggest two main attributes:

 

 

• 
  Accountwide (or at least legacywide) kill/death ratio - Reasonable measure of player skill level. Could also include assists in order not to punish players who go for support ships. This ratio will also be self-adjusting---if you are put in too tough matches your kill/death ratio will slowly decrease and eventually the matchmaker will match you against less deadly opponents.
  

 

 

• 
  Requisition on your top three ships - If two equally skilled players are playing against each other, but one has a new character with ships straight out of the hanger and the other has fully mastered ships then the latter player will have a definite advantage. This could be compensated by multiplying your kill/death ratio by a factor depending on how much requisition you have on your best ships. For example, if you have zero requisition you could get a 50% reduction of the kill/death ratio VALUE considered by the matchmaker.
  

[LordFell]

That sounds good. Give each character a ranking based on Legacy Wide KDA, Mastery Percentage of ships in hanger... and maybe a "hot streak" past ten (or twenty) game Win/Loss.

 

...I think Legacy KDA is probably the biggest factor that should determine a players overall ranking when match making though.

[phalczen]

I doubt a legacy wide value could be considered for probably the same reason that ELO for the ground is character specific. I would imagine it has something to do with database lookups. Just consider how long it takes to open your legacy bank these days or how you have to open, close, and then re-open crafting crew skill windows to get the system to display the right number of things you can craft. We know that the matchmaker doesn't even attempt to pop a match unless there are 8 people in queue on both sides. Once you reach that critical mass of players queued, the match doesn't pop instantly ... probably because its figuring out the other factors that Drako mentioned. Adding in a database lookup to compute K/D ratio or worse (K+A)/D ratio legacy wide, and then use those figures to pair the groups, probably causes an unacceptable delay in queue popping. Your ground ranked pvp ELO can't even be calculated unless you have completed ten matches for that season, suggesting that ELO is computed post match, to minimize impact on time-to-queue-pop. Then that variable is "attached" to your character the way your discipline is, and then with wait time determines when your queue pops and with whom. Much easier to compare a static number that only is updated after the match.

[Ramalina]

@placzen

 

The 10 match requirement for ground PvP rankings doesn't really have anything to do with the time it takes for loading and processing data. Ranking algorithms need to have a certain minimum sample size of match outcomes before they can estimate player skill with enough accuracy to be useful for matchmaking. It would still require you to complete those 10 matches even if data access and computation were instantaneous.

 

 

The compelling argument against a legacy based ranking function for GSF is that you'd want to recycle as much of the ground PvP ranking code as you could to save time, and because of class differences the ground PvP ranking system has to be character based, not legacy based.

 

It's not about hardware time, it's not about our time in queue, it's about payroll time.

[phalczen]

@placzen

 

The 10 match requirement for ground PvP rankings doesn't really have anything to do with the time it takes for loading and processing data. Ranking algorithms need to have a certain minimum sample size of match outcomes before they can estimate player skill with enough accuracy to be useful for matchmaking. It would still require you to complete those 10 matches even if data access and computation were instantaneous.

I know that. My point was that the variable is calculated after the first ten and after each subsequent match and is then "static" while you are queued. You cannot change disciplines or utilities while queued for ground pvp, just like you cannot change your ship builds in the hangar while queued. They become "static" variables as far as the matchmaker is concerned. Similarly, your ELO is not calculated when the matchmaker is attempting to form a match. It's just "looked up" along with your discipline.

If the matchmaker had to check each person's legacy in order to form a valid match, that would generate extra overhead, and I think that would slow down queue pops. I could be wrong though.

 

The compelling argument against a legacy based ranking function for GSF is that you'd want to recycle as much of the ground PvP ranking code as you could to save time, and because of class differences the ground PvP ranking system has to be character based, not legacy based.

 

It's not about hardware time, it's not about our time in queue, it's about payroll time.

 

Perhaps. If ground ELO was legacy based, a player could get onto a as-yet-unranked alt and be matched with higher ranked people, resulting in a much larger boost in ELO if they won. I'm not sure that would necessarily be exploiting the system, but I doubt its intended. But hey, they don't enforce a gear rating for ranked ground pvp, and its incentivized such that the rewards enable acquisition of the gear you should already have in order to compete at the highest levels ... its sort of backwards. So who knows what they really intend with the system beyond an attempt to match the highest skilled players.

[Verain]

Nothing should be based on legacy or account. Everything should be based on character. This is a free to play game, and GSF is the most free to play part of it, given that it offers ALL of GSF to a totally f2p character. That means if someone wants to smurf, they'll just spam no-account accounts.

 

If hangars were account wide, or accounts cost money to create and maintain, you could make a case for this. But none of that is true.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Verain

[HrRav]

Whether or not account/legacy wide rating is feasible is not the crucial part of the matchmaking. (I guess most pilots have more or less the same stats on all characters anyway.) As I see it, the main issues are that the matchmaker needs to use an appropriate skill measure and that it should not start a game as soon as there are 16 players in the queue if there are other ongoing matches on the server - in that case it is bettter to wait until that game has ended and try to balance the teams from a pool of 32 players.

[Flusssaeure]

Well after depending on time slot and server there often isn't more than one gaming running at the same time and people who qued while the game is running have to wait until the game ended that enough people are in que to start a second game I don't think that having to wait that a game ends will change the matchmaking enough to make a difference. Especially when you consider that not every one of the first game will que again because daily full / game was to one - sided / having to go to lunch; dinner; bed and not every one who listed later is patient enough to wait for the full 15 Minute duration.

 

And what about the prime time when two or three games running at the same time? Should one time out match than prevent every one on the server from getting a match because the other games ended earlier but still the people from the earlier ended matches and the player qued later have to wait for the time out matches to get a new game.

 

The biggest sin of the matchmaker today is that it priofities new player and groups at the same time. Because it forces veterans with many matches to group to get a match at all but then pairs them against a random group of new players who also have priority. This together with the small player pool is one of the main sources for unbalanced matches.

[XhrisShan]

You cannot matchmake in a game where a large percentage of the players do not care to learn the game or even whether they are playing the game. When they can get their non-GSF points through not playing, you end up with numbers like this:

 

(for the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to the scoreboard leader in Damage or Kills as the Ace)

 

Average Damage done...

64397 - Ace

19308 - Average non-ace

 

Average Kills scored...

11 - Ace

02 - Average non-ace

 

Average number of Zero-kill players per game: 5

 

Win % when Enemy team has more Zero-kill players than Allied team...

89.66% - Domination

93.10% - Deathmatch

Where did you get those numbers from?

[Drakkolich]

Where did you get those numbers from?

 

He did an experiment where he recorded a large number of games.

[LasagnaSurfer]

Groups only allowed to face groups would be nice.

[nvlvbiomedical]

time to stop discussing the matchmaker