CMM and server browser issues, and why we need a "mini stopwatch" casual gamemode.

(Eox) #1

For years people have complained about in game balancing. CMM was supposed to be the answer to that, but it doesn’t do such a good job at making games balanced due to the simple fact that OBJ by definition is NOT balanced. Every map from DB suffer from an attacker or a defender bias, and since CMM is purely OBJ based at the moment, balancing is not efficient at all. I don’t even know if the CMM algorithm takes map bias into account for its balancing, and I would assume it probably doesn’t (hopefully a dev can provide some information about that ?).

Meanwhile SW is purely limited to server browser. Server browser is even worse at finding you a balanced match because everyone is free to hop in and out. Stacking is incredibly common, and people will hardly switch even when the game ends up with a 7vs4. The only thing left for players to find balanced games is ranked, but it has a bad reputation, and not all of us feel like competitors. SW also tend to last really long, which is something that can put off a lot of people. I myself would rather play multiple short games than a single huge one.

OBJ is ill fitted to any kind of matchmaking. Actually I would probably go further and say that it fails as a gamemode. SW would be much more balanced but it suffers from the chaos of server browser, and you can’t play it in CMM. SD wants to make maps more attacker biased probably in order to speed up SW games, but that attacker bias will make CMM games (aka OBJ) borderline unplayable. Just look at Castle : people love Castle, but if you play it in OBJ and get matched in defense too much, I swear you will hate it with a passion.

I’ve been thinking about the issues for a good moment and came to the conclusion that we should get rid of objective gamemode when it comes about CMM. CMM’s nature makes it so we must absolutely make a gamemode where both teams have equals chances to win so it can be enjoyable. But SW’s lenght does not fit the casual approach of the gamemode. This is why I would suggest a new gamemode for CMM that diverges from SW : mini-SW.

The principle is very simple. It’s basically a SW game, but limited to a single objective. Maps are much smaller with a single objective to play. Both teams have up to 7 minutes to claim or protect the objective, and the best time wins. It effectively gives to players games that can be at worst twice as fast as SW, which would please the more casual players, people who hate long games or those who are in a hurry. It’s short, balanced, and IMO perfect for pub play.

Maps for such a gamemode wouldn’t be too hard to do as well. We can reuse all maps from OBJ/SW and just cut the objective we want. Spawn points would probably hardly change (unless playtesting shows that it’s needed ofc). Heck, we could even re-use maps from our old Execution game-mode to give them a second life. That gamemode would probably work best with C4 or delivery based objectives. But we probably can adapt it for EV escort as well. I think Dome’s second objective would fit that gamemode a lot.

That mini-SW gamemode would replace the current OBJ gamemode in CMM. As for objective maps, I’d let the liberty to devs to take a decision about what we should do with it. Best case scenario : we add that mode to server browser.

If we don’t add such a gamemode, we will have to at the very least find solutions to adress the server browser issues and tune CMM so it takes map bias into account. I can’t suggest any solutions for that at the moment since I can’t think of anything that would work, but auto-balancing mid game when the amount of players in a team reaches a critical points sounds like a no-brainer.

That’s about it.

(nokiII) #2

Just playing one stage of a map would destroy the whole feeling of progression in the maps and makes it even harder for people to progress into ranked…

If you want to “redo” CMM, you take stopwatch and add the time progression from objective to it. Done. Now you’ve got at “best” (aka a stomp) ~6 minutes of playtime (a fullhold or a 3 min map rush + 3 min defense). And at worst you play 30 minutes for the whole game if it is really that even, which I don’t think people would really mind.

I think people don’t mind long games in general, but they usually don’t like long drawn out unbalanced games which stopwatch in the server browser provides way too often due to multiple reasons.

(Melinder) #3

@nokiII said:
I think people don’t mind long games in general, but they usually don’t like long drawn out unbalanced games which stopwatch in the server browser provides way too often due to multiple reasons.

I don’t know where this idea came from that Stopwatch is too long for casual. All of the most popular games out there right now have their most played modes extend much much longer on average, and have their peaks closer to an hour.

(SiwaonaDaphnewen) #4

Hello.

Stopwatch is not much better for CMM. It issues from objective-focused game concept. Teams in CMM may get imbalanced for many reasons standard leave, connection issues, rage quits ect. This creates imbalance which will result in wasted time for attacking team or insta-lost objective for defencive team. Matchmaker will sort teams out with new people, but round 1 will be spoiled. And sad to admit it will cause more people to leave game in round 2 and even worse round: win on first objective, 3 min for whole mission or 10+ minute spawn camp.

Casual stopwatch will just have issues that pub stopwatch has.

There is another more complicated problem. CMM allows you to play in party. That might be a good feature for team play and players, but that’s absurdly bad feature for game balance. Do you expect an even game when one team has full stack of gold5+ players and other has a bunch of random unranked low-lvl pub-heros? Even pubs with their glorious balance don’t have such stacks.

You look on Casual from game balance perspective and that might be a mistake. CMM is aimed to create a game for you in a first place no matter about such secondary goals like game and map balance. It creates for you a game so you enjoy playing the game in in general. Creating even and balanced match is a main goal for Ranked game mode and to be honest it doesn’t do it’s job either because of its low player base but that’s a whole different topic.

This is why CMM should remain objective. You hop in, you play a fast game, you hop to another game with likely different map and different teams. That’s much better casual experience.

(woodchip) #5

Seems like you are making a lot out of maps being attacker of defender biased in CMM. But the attacker or defender bias is relatively small, especially within the context of CMM where there is naturally a lot of variance. And so far as maps are biased either way as far as I can tell that is only an opportunity like you say to smooth over imperfect matchmaking.

Your other point is that Obj is too attacker biased in general. Which might be true, but SD has the numbers. If so then of course they can adjust the attack time per map.

None of this to me amounts to a fundamental flaw with the Obj gametype.

And Obj is better than SW for casual play for a half dozen reasons. It’s not even a question except from the competitive players point of view, which is just a consequence of people taking issue with a game mode not primarily designed for them. Granted, competitive players not liking Obj is a real issue right now with both server browser and ranked decimated, but hopefully that will change.

(Teflon Love) #6

@SiwaonaDaphnewen said:
There is another more complicated problem. CMM allows you to play in party. That might be a good feature for team play and players, but that’s absurdly bad feature for game balance. Do you expect an even game when one team has full stack of gold5+ players and other has a bunch of random unranked low-lvl pub-heros? Even pubs with their glorious balance don’t have such stacks.

The match making already attempts to compensate for that by matching stacks with higher skilled individual players. How well the current algorithm actually works in practice I leave open for debate, but in theory stacks can be dealt with.

(Chris Mullins) #7

Chatted about this in another thread earlier: http://forums.dirtybomb.com/discussion/39308/the-x-vs-x-question#latest

Have passed this on to a few other devs to look at though!

(kopyright) #8

@teflonlove said:

@SiwaonaDaphnewen said:
There is another more complicated problem. CMM allows you to play in party. That might be a good feature for team play and players, but that’s absurdly bad feature for game balance. Do you expect an even game when one team has full stack of gold5+ players and other has a bunch of random unranked low-lvl pub-heros? Even pubs with their glorious balance don’t have such stacks.

The match making already attempts to compensate for that by matching stacks with higher skilled individual players. How well the current algorithm actually works in practice I leave open for debate, but in theory stacks can be dealt with.

Which is something I have been constantly complaining about. Just because you team up with some friends does not mean you are more competent, or at least not as competent as the algorithm thinks you should be. Me and my clan mate play regularly as a party, and we hold up quite well, but as soon as we bring in two non-seasoned teammates CMM matches us against almost impossibly outskilling opponents, which is not only frustrating for the two of us but also completely spoils our friends’ enjoyment of the game altogether to the point they are willing to play less and less with every passing day. Not exactly the best way to draw more people in.