How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?
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@nex From memory when having matchmaking AI was last discussed in detail (https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/1069766221140074626) while there were strong views both for and against the main hurdle was someone with the time and ability to implement an 'AI in matchmaker' solution (although an agreement would also be needed on what form it would take as there are a number of options).
As a very brief note of some of the arguments I can recall, a potential benefit might be increasing the player base and TMM activity since people are more likely to find a game which is likely to be more interesting than watching the timer tick down. A potential risk (which would depend on how it was implemented) is that people who would've waited in the queue and then matched with another player both end up fighting against an AI instead, with this being less preferable to both players than if they fought each other.
However, the pros and cons were discussed at length before and are largely academic if it's not feasible to implement in the first place (and it is not straightforward to implement even if there was a general consensus that AI in matchmaker could be a good thing)
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@maudlin27 Yeah I would expect there to be some things to think about.
And if it's a hassle to implement, there are probably more pressing matters right now.
(sadly I can't see the discord thread you linked)
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@funkoff said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
I watch under 1000 rated 3v3 TMM games. They are baaaaaaad. It's kind if amusing to watch them
Of course low-rated players are bad at the game. That is precisely what a low rating means. And that's why higher-rated players don't want to play with them.
If people hate being 500-rated, they can find ways to improve. Most people who are 500-rated don't care enough to put in the effort to seek that kind of improvement
That's okay. Not everyone takes the game so seriously. People are allowed to play the way they want to play.
I'm guessing the 11 people who downvoted you are all 1200+ nerds who take their rating VERY SERIOUSLY so they're white knighting for 500-rated players who think your post was funny.
Also, you hit the nail on the head as to why higher-rated players won't let 500s into their games. It's because 500s are BAD and having them around can ruin the game for everyone else. It's the same reason, when someone hosts a "1.6k+ Setons" that I'm not invited.
How many of the people who downvoted you play 3 matches with 500s every week?
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@arma473 said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
I'm guessing the 11 people who downvoted you are all 1200+ nerds who take their rating VERY SERIOUSLY so they're white knighting for 500-rated players who think your post was funny.
Downvoting happens if you make post that simultanously
- is not constructive to the discussion at hand
- reeks of the stupid "bad players should feel bad for being bad" mindset common in gamers that feel the need to compensate their fragile IRL egos with video game skill
- makes fun of probably about 65% of the PvP player base / more than 80% of the total player base
- fails to be funny, sarcastic or generally entertaining
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@clyf said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
How does the ranking of a player affect how long it takes to get a game started?
The higher ranked a person is, the more likely they play the game more and have a more stable setup. Hosting a high ranked game generally goes a lot more smoothly than lower ranked.
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@arma473 said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
@funkoff said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
I watch under 1000 rated 3v3 TMM games. They are baaaaaaad. It's kind if amusing to watch them
Of course low-rated players are bad at the game. That is precisely what a low rating means. And that's why higher-rated players don't want to play with them.
If people hate being 500-rated, they can find ways to improve. Most people who are 500-rated don't care enough to put in the effort to seek that kind of improvement
That's okay. Not everyone takes the game so seriously. People are allowed to play the way they want to play.
I'm guessing the 11 people who downvoted you are all 1200+ nerds who take their rating VERY SERIOUSLY so they're white knighting for 500-rated players who think your post was funny.
Also, you hit the nail on the head as to why higher-rated players won't let 500s into their games. It's because 500s are BAD and having them around can ruin the game for everyone else. It's the same reason, when someone hosts a "1.6k+ Setons" that I'm not invited.
How many of the people who downvoted you play 3 matches with 500s every week?
How are people going to get better when they're lucky to get 1 or 2 decent games in a night? I understand not wanting to play with terrible players, but we also need to be realistic about how many players are actually on at a given time and what's realistic to expect if want a health playerbase. Similarly, I could rant for hours about the people who insist on only playing 12-16 player lobbies when there's a grand total of like 30 people actually playing.
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It's not the responsibility of anyone to sacrifice their evening playing games that they don't want to play. Furthermore, I don't think most low rating players would appreciate playing with much higher rating players on a regular basis. You can only get crushed so many times until you start to feel terrible.
Yes, there's clearly a problem onboarding new players. However, telling people to just play more with low ratings players is not a viable solution.
On a related note, I've been playing ladder in a different game recently where the matchmaking range is far too broad. I have 73 wins and 15 losses. It is not fun for me that the majority of my games are essentially meaningless stomps. I don't think it's fun for the opponents either.
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@redx said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
How are people going to get better when they're lucky to get 1 or 2 decent games in a night? I understand not wanting to play with terrible players, but we also need to be realistic about how many players are actually on at a given time and what's realistic to expect if want a health playerbase.
Low rated people are be the biggest rating bracket. I don't know why we don't see loads and loads of noob lobbies. Maybe these people don't feel confident to host a lobby. Maybe they all play in the matchmaker instead, after all that was a big reason to create it. But you already said that the matchmaker is dead in your timezone, so honestly I have no idea where the low rated players in your timezone are hiding. But they must be somewhere.
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@blackyps said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
Maybe these people don't feel confident to host a lobby
Maybe because for people to actually join you, you'd need to look through 5 bazillion lobby options, because I think not even astro is played on default settings.
Plus, you'd need to balance the game, so you need to know how to enable auto-balance and you'll still get problems with people that want to be on the same team if you can't manually balance, which can put you into an uncomfortable position.I'm also not sure if maybe an astro and a dualgap matchmaker queue would help in bringing players together more.
(No idea how different the settings of the different astro/gap lobbies are or if there would be other reasons why they would rather host a custom game instead of a matchmaker queue)
Having a matchmaker queue for one map is kinda weird, but if it reflects what the people want to play then why not?
(If people use it) it will also allow you to queue normal 3v3 and Astro at the same time, again to give people that want to play a normal game, but would be fine with astro, the option to queue both instead of having to commit to either matchmaker or waiting in a custom astro lobby. -
Speaking for myself, the only option for late US east/pacific timezones is dual-gap custom games. Aside from the lessons learned in dgap bad on their own, in big team games your fate is tied much more to the performance of your team, so unless you're carrying (unlikely) it's a bit of a coin flip. I've lost as many games in front land, winning my slot, as I have in an air or eco slot contributing very little*.
*That ratio is made up, but the issue of wins/ranking being divorced from individual performance is real.
Throwing AI opponents into low-ranking ladder would A. allow playing ladder to be viable in non-European time zones and B. add more resolution to low ranks. When I see anything <800 right now that player can range from pretty-good-actually to absolutely-sim-city-godawful.
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@clyf yeah, the rating system isn't designed to handle large teams, so it takes a lot more games to accurately reflect a players skill when they play 8v8 than if they played 1v1.
The feeling of the coin flip won't ever go away though, as your winrate against equally skilled players is bound to be 50% and the higher the player count the lower your own impact, so even if the teams are ~balanced (assuming all players have a high enough game count) your win rate will be ~50% no matter if you do well or not, since it will average out over the players. (for each fuck up you do, someone in the enemy team will fuck up as well) -
Yes I think my implicit point was more options for smaller games would be better.
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@nex said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
@clyf yeah, the rating system isn't designed to handle large teams
On the contrary
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/TR-2006-80.pdf -
@blodir said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
On a related note, I've been playing ladder in a different game recently where the matchmaking range is far too broad. I have 73 wins and 15 losses. It is not fun for me that the majority of my games are essentially meaningless stomps. I don't think it's fun for the opponents either.
It's been my assumption that, when a player queues for a game in FaF, the system begins by trying to find a player near their rating,
but as they queue for longer and longer, it 'expands' the range of ratings it's looking for.Is this not the case?
It seems like the most elegant solution, where people will get games against equally-skilled players, but if they're really really desperate for a game, they can wait for longer and fight someone outside their skill level.When I started out (not long ago!) I WANTED to fight stronger players, and would queue for ages in the hope that a strong player had also been queueing for a long time. I also understand people not wanting to play people far outside their rating, at which point cancelling then re-joining the queue seems like a fine solution, giving control to the users.
I guess another option is allowing a player to set a range for which players they are happy to queue against - although it could allow for rating manipulation if the player got too much control over it, so maybe increments of 100 would be more suitable?
@nex said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
so it takes a lot more games to accurately reflect a players skill when they play 8v8 than if they played 1v1.
This will always be the case. There's no impersonal (/automatic) system that can make a 4v4 'zero in' on a players real skill any less than 4 times slower than 1v1s.
That's just the nature of team games, in that players can 'lean' on allies in 3/4 of the games they play.
I played tons of a game called 'battlezone 2', whose community was miles smaller than FaF. In that game, everybody basically knew one another (you'd have maybe 20 total players online at peak times), and could balance teams based on knowledge of the players. When new players arrived, their skill would be very quickly assessed by players - but this doesn't really work with any 'automatic' (maths-based) systems that I'm aware of.
So basically, if your community is large enough to necessitate ratings as a 'skill currency', you're kinda forced to have skill take ages to sort out when playing large team games.
(A similar issue occurs with the very popular 'MOBA' games - players can play for months or years without every really getting an accurate skill, because of the randomness introduced by only controlling 10% of the players in a match, rather than 50% in a 1v1). This is a mostly the reason I prefer playing 1v1 games! -
^The issue is that team performance in FAF is less like a sum and more like a "who is the weakest or strongest link in a critical position".
*Edit: at lower levels
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@blodir I have missphrased my point, which is it is less efficient at evaluating players that play in teams. Whether it does this well compared to other rating systems, I can't say.
So while they tried to make it work for teams, it still suffers compared to 1v1 games.@clyf said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
The issue is that team performance in FAF is less like a sum and more like a "who is the weakest or strongest link in a critical position".
that is just a superficial issue, as that is the case for both teams and will average out over multiple games, so it doesn't impact the rating system a lot.
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@clyf said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
The issue is that team performance in FAF is less like a sum and more like a "who is the weakest or strongest link in a critical position
Usually strongest, yes?
The fact that when a weak player gets knocked out, all their stuff get's given to stronger players, seems like it would make the team games lean more towards 'which team has the strongest player?' than 'which team has the weakest player?'
I don't play many team games, but I was led to believe that some games 'turned around' when the 'bad' player got knocked out, HELPING the team that lost an ACU!
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@redx said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
How are people going to get better when they're lucky to get 1 or 2 decent games in a night?
Your mistake is assuming that you get better by playing matches, or by playing matches with higher-rated players.
The truth is: you get better either with coaching from a better player, or by being your own coach. Which means understanding why you lost a match (it's usually not "unit composition" or "strategy," usually it is ECONOMY, raiding and being raided, expanding, gathering and spending resources). It means accepting responsibility for every loss as your own fault and your own lack of skill. It means watching replays and being critical of bad decisions you made and opportunities you missed.
Unfortunately, just hanging out with higher rated players doesn't transfer skill to you by osmosis. Usually you just end up being carried by them, they scout for you, they overflow energy to you, they beat the other team for you, you're just going along for the ride.
If you really want to get better, you could start by reading my guide. (Not the whole thing--just read until you've absorbed a few new ideas, practice them, then you can go back and read more of it.) If you really want to get better, it means playing lots of 1v1 matches and getting advice from higher-rated players (ask them to watch a replay and tell you what you should do better). You have to git gud at 1v1 before you can be good in team games. Even just trying to get in to team games means you're not understanding how to get better.
By the way, no one is obligated to get better. Some people might be different and learn in different ways. But I think this is the only viable path to improving rating for 95% of FAF players.
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If the model for team performance doesn't reflect individual performance, you're just averaging out noise. Consider team slayer: your individual performance is far more impactful (with your kills and deaths being reflected directly in the game deciding score) than two ~400 ranked players sitting in the back of an otherwise 1000-1500 ranked match.
it is less efficient at evaluating players that play in teams
What's the basis for you believing this if you don't agree with the above?
all their stuff get's given to stronger players
Heavily dependent on share mode, yes. And yes, usually it's the stronger player that has the ability to finish the game out that plays a critical role.
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Wow lots of discussion about score and rating here.
An important thing that makes FAF different from a shooter game (on which much of this score research has been done) is that the map - and the finite resources on the map - matter more in FAF. Everybody knows that if you kill the 900 player in a 900/1500/1900 team fighting a 1400/1400/1500 team, that you are doing that team a favor, particularly in full share, as the 1900 player will make far-greater use of the limited resources. I've seen at least one game in which the lower rated player gifts the higher rater player his base and hides his ACU in water for this exact reason. This is why "Share Until Death" became meta in the first place. (In unmodded SupCom, there were no restrictions on share... either you gifted your base manually when you died, and your team got it, or you didn't do this and they didn't.)
