Auto Team Balance, and problem of stacking.
Melatonin
Babbler Join Date: 2003-03-15 Member: 14551Members, Constellation
Babbler Join Date: 2003-03-15 Member: 14551Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">as an optional server setting.</div>Stacking is a problem.
Stacking happens all the time.
because both NS, and NS2 have two main sets of core players, the public server players and the clan players, there exists a wide range of skill levels, and it is very common to see players who play with lots of clan players (and are as a result more practised and knowledgeable).
Its not unreasonable for these more skilled players to join random games when they are not playing organised matches (often its benign, but rarely you do see a 'pubstomp').
When this happens, people take note, they see one or two players tearing up a server, and they have the following options
1: ignore this and play whichever team they want
2: join the same team as them, and have a 'more enjoyable' game
I say more enjoyable, because, although NS2 does a good job of letting the losing team have fun, winning is better! it feels better. People like to win.
and its very common to see a teamstack, following a single good player. (this isn't the only factor ofc, but its a major one... sometimes you can sense an impending alien win because the marines did so well last match for example).
so often games come down to a clearly unbalanced state within the first 10 seconds of being back in the ready room, with people waiting in the ready room, all trying to get on the 'better team'.
it happened in NS1, and it's happening in NS2.
this sucks!
I want balanced games, games with some back and forth dynamic play, not the largely one sided affair that so often happens at present.
Now, against a brute force solution, like random all:
I often play with a couple of good players and we like to join the same team, so I guess I am as guilty of stacking as anyone. When I talk about an enforced random, they are against the idea, they like being able to play with their friends.
this is a fair point, it almost negates the need for a ready room at all.
I think any solution to the stacking problem, should be nuanced.
either, make the server setting optional, so that there still exist servers where playing with friends is possible, or else implement the fix in such a way that people have time to join friends before randomisation occurs.
(I also recognise that forcing team joining means that AFK players will be taking up resources, instead of simply taking up a slot in the server, but think this a fair trade of for more balanced games.)
Ideally, I would love to see a 15/ 20 second grace period between matches, where players can join either team (as happens now), but when the game starts all players still in the ready room are allocated a team based on last games scores (an attempt to even distribute the good players).
what do you guys think?
Stacking happens all the time.
because both NS, and NS2 have two main sets of core players, the public server players and the clan players, there exists a wide range of skill levels, and it is very common to see players who play with lots of clan players (and are as a result more practised and knowledgeable).
Its not unreasonable for these more skilled players to join random games when they are not playing organised matches (often its benign, but rarely you do see a 'pubstomp').
When this happens, people take note, they see one or two players tearing up a server, and they have the following options
1: ignore this and play whichever team they want
2: join the same team as them, and have a 'more enjoyable' game
I say more enjoyable, because, although NS2 does a good job of letting the losing team have fun, winning is better! it feels better. People like to win.
and its very common to see a teamstack, following a single good player. (this isn't the only factor ofc, but its a major one... sometimes you can sense an impending alien win because the marines did so well last match for example).
so often games come down to a clearly unbalanced state within the first 10 seconds of being back in the ready room, with people waiting in the ready room, all trying to get on the 'better team'.
it happened in NS1, and it's happening in NS2.
this sucks!
I want balanced games, games with some back and forth dynamic play, not the largely one sided affair that so often happens at present.
Now, against a brute force solution, like random all:
I often play with a couple of good players and we like to join the same team, so I guess I am as guilty of stacking as anyone. When I talk about an enforced random, they are against the idea, they like being able to play with their friends.
this is a fair point, it almost negates the need for a ready room at all.
I think any solution to the stacking problem, should be nuanced.
either, make the server setting optional, so that there still exist servers where playing with friends is possible, or else implement the fix in such a way that people have time to join friends before randomisation occurs.
(I also recognise that forcing team joining means that AFK players will be taking up resources, instead of simply taking up a slot in the server, but think this a fair trade of for more balanced games.)
Ideally, I would love to see a 15/ 20 second grace period between matches, where players can join either team (as happens now), but when the game starts all players still in the ready room are allocated a team based on last games scores (an attempt to even distribute the good players).
what do you guys think?
Comments
This have happened so far 27 times aka pretty much all games ive played until one side have one.
We are in 2012 games need auto team balance, and an option to mix teams after game is over,
Even if you make seperate servers, you will just create a more confusing and complex option to join servers, and one of the gamemodes will probably barely be played. (i.e. everyone goes to auto balance servers and nobody is able to play with their friends anymore because those servers are empty).
So tl;dr... I don't think you can do anything about it without destroying some people's game experience.
I think the Devs have talked about putting in a match making / stat tracking system post 1.0 release.
I think the Devs have talked about putting in a match making / stat tracking system post 1.0 release.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
^
This is largely how other games (e.g. SC2) have solved the pubstomping program. You create a matchmaking system that matches people in leagues based on a measure of skill. That way, people are able to play against people of similar skill.
Also you got to take note that most people prefer to be on the losing side, and just keep going to that team each game.
And to scardy, you have got to remember that sc2 has a MUCH MUCH bigger community than ns2 does, regardless the similarities, and also their games don't require to be at least 5/5 or 6/6 to be balanced fair and fun, they can do 1v1's, so that kind of matchmaking i don't think would work very well.
Got any data / source on that? My experience seeding tournament brackets for the local fighting game community leads me to believe it really isn't that hard. It becomes pretty clear with in 10-20 matches which players are better than other players. Keep in mind the goal isn't to exactly rank players, but rather put them in general brackets. Even just, novice, regular, and pro brackets would do a lot of good in NS2.
Also can you define, not working that well? My understanding is the win/losses on match making services like Battle.net and DOTA are in the 50% +/- 5% for the vast majority of players. That sounds like it is working to me.
<!--quoteo(post=1965391:date=Aug 20 2012, 08:49 PM:name=AuroN2)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (AuroN2 @ Aug 20 2012, 08:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1965391"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And to scardy, you have got to remember that sc2 has a MUCH MUCH bigger community than ns2 does, regardless the similarities, and also their games don't require to be at least 5/5 or 6/6 to be balanced fair and fun, they can do 1v1's, so that kind of matchmaking i don't think would work very well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
DOTA and LoL do a good job regardless in the 5v5 team setting, why would 6v6 or even 8v8 be much different?
If you want to worry about a problem match making in ns2 might have, it is the added complication of Commanding. How do we incorporate this aspect of the game into a ranking / match making service?
DOTA and LOL have thousands of players. Matchmaking is a lot easier when you have a huge pool of players to draw from.
I'm a fairly experienced LoL player by now and I can tell you that there's often a big skill gap between people in the same bracket (elo range). This is largely due to the system only accounting for wins, not for game stats. The phenomenon you see, is 'carrying', where lesser players get to be amongst the greater; all because the better players win the game <b>for</b> them. Everyone who wins gets more elo points = rises in the charts.
If NS2 were to implement such a system, the servers could no longer be dedicated (or at least, they'd have to be controlled by this matchmaking system), there would have to be thousands of players to be able to match them properly (based on skill and location (for connection speed)) and many of those thousands of people would have to <b>want</b> to play 'ranked' games.
That's a lot of hurdles.
Also can you define, not working that well? My understanding is the win/losses on match making services like Battle.net and DOTA are in the 50% +/- 5% for the vast majority of players. That sounds like it is working to me.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You're comparing fighting games (1v1) against a 6v6 format. Totally different, not to mention your personally seeding tournaments, not an algorithm.
<u>Matchmaking</u>
- A gather-like system where people fill up a lobby of something like a 6v6 or 8v8 of people in roughly the same league.
<u>Server Current Skill Rating</u>
- Basically, it would be a five bar graphic (think L4D1/2 ping bars) that shows up next to each server in the server browser that shows how many players in that server are in the same league as you (i.e. 5 bars = 90+% of the players are in the same league, 4 bars = 75%, 3 bars = 50%, 2 bars = 25%, 1 bar = <10%). That way when you can add skill range of players in a server to factors you use to choose which to join.
I think thousands of concurrent players on release is not unreasonable. The <a href="http://ns2stats.org/" target="_blank">ns2stats.org</a> playercount values regularly show hundreds of concurrent players and its not even running on all servers.
Also, the matchmaking system doesn't have to work 100% to be valuable. Even if it only increases the number of balanced matched by 10%, that will be an improvement. The concerns about carrying are real, but can be mitigated by modifying how the rating systems are calculated.
That would give an easy in-game solution to talk to people and organize pugs (Pick up groups, premade teams to fight eachother, consisting of (mostly) non-affiliated players). Basically a replacement for the old IRC solutions.
Not sure how difficult it would be to implement such a thing technically though. I would consider it an alternative to a matchmaking system - human matchmakers! :)
Needs to be a servermod, otherwise people will just join via j1/j2 in the console. Also, random without sorting based on skill can just as easily stack teams (though, it would still be an improvement over the current system).
people already do wait hours to play a good pug. see ENSL gathers.
Also, no match making is going to be perfect, it just has to work reasonably well. Sure some times match making is a bit off in LoL/SC2, but on the whole they work pretty well. I concede that it is entirely possible that NS2 may have long queues then these games.
Maybe in the future there could be integration with ns2stats and consider things like k/d, playtime and overall score while setting up teams - instead of just a random shuffle? I am no coder so I don't really know the limits of that.
It's not about every player on the team being of equal skill. It's about the average skill of the teams being closer together. E.g. if 2 top players are playing they don't both get put on the one team.
I think this can be achieved pretty easily (although not perfectly) by tracking elo rankings via K:D. Then just have the servers mix the teams up based on average elo, so each team has an equal number of good players and an equal number of noobs. Of course you would still get times where it is stacked a bit but it would be much better than completley random. I hope this is what ns2stats.org is going to implement.
Stacked teams suck. It's rather boring to be on a team of 8 vs a team of 4. It is also frustrating to be on that team of 4 vs that team of 8. Team stacking is an issue with any team based FPS -- it is just the nature of pubs.