Community Question: Measuring Player Skill

(tokamak) #381

It’s easier to produce but it’s nearly impossible to sell. An ETQW sequel with simply more of the same would do great. I’ve heard enough people on sites like IGN and Reddit say that the game seemed interesting but that they were too busy playing COD at the time.

People simply like sequels. Consumer logic says that if something received a sequel then it was popular (and therefore good) enough to to be bought. Complete bull**** of course, but that ‘2’ or ‘3’ after a title is the layman’s seal of approval.

[QUOTE=edxot;404186]it is also very hard to kill many people and still lose.

maybe we could all forget about my last post.[/QUOTE]
Killing people is one of the things that reward xp though.

(SockDog) #382

Yes, I’d forgotten about that! The Challenges in Brink I think were a huge innovation. I liked that they gave focus and even rewards without compromising the actual game. Would like to see them expanded into pretty much a mode of their own, with leaderboards, even stats. Let people go crazy.

Something else that might help is a good demo/recording system in the game so people can easily youtube tutorials, gameplay. Along with streaming/broadcasting.

I don’t really play competitively any more but I’ve never seen it as a them and us kind of thing. Both pub and competitive players contribute to a game’s success and as such should be recognised. Of course we do have to be careful that we don’t create a situation where we expect a competitive experience in a pub game. That is probably where a lot of the conflict originates.

You seem to think I want to discuss what you feel this thread should be about.

[QUOTE=shirosae;404184]@Sockdog Been reading this stuff on and off, might have missed something crucial, apologies if so. /disclaimer

The thing is this: I’m here to play other people, good and bad. If I ever felt like my primary opponent was a balancing system and not the opposing players, I’d just quit and do something else. I can see that an L4D director thing works in the context of a basically PvE co-op thing, but I can’t think of a way to have a gameplay-level balancing system in a multiplayer game be both effective and unintrusive enough to not make me want to leave.

I can’t see anything working except using players to do the balancing by evening out the teams. And if you want to encourage that, I keep coming back to ELO rating. Make wins the primary stat, and weight each win by ELO.

I guess maybe some sort of gameplay-altering balancing system might work in a training match environment? Like an arcade mode thing. I’m quite fond of the idea of putting in a powerup-tastic pink hats arcade mode for people just starting out or for players to have fun with.[/QUOTE]

Yup, understand that concern, the big risk there is a feeling of being cheated, if that happened I doubt anyone would feel the fun in the game. It’s a big risk for a developer to take so yes perhaps it’s something that could be trialled in a mode alongside others in the game. I think SD has been way too all or nothing in its approach.

But from what I’ve experienced people will just leave servers if they’re moved, especially if they’re being encouraged to invest in one side or another. Players drop and get replaced and you can’t do a team shuffle halfway through a match. Even the old W/L argument rears it’s head with people trying to avoid loses and play the system. matchmaking is great for individuals, in games focused around individuals but when you again come down to it being a team game and the teams needing balancing everything just becomes inaccurate and is far too static to prevent the problems we are trying to avoid.

The way I see it is that I’ve come away from many games feeling equally cheated and pissed off. It’s just that I expect that, it’s a price to pay when playing pub games. Does that make it right though? Should we just accept that this is the way online games will be forever? I’d also say that such a system would only impact games where there is a clear difference in skill. If teams are really balanced then the system could sit back and do nothing or focus on upgrading each team equally.

(DJScream) #383

Just a quick info about me because I’m the new guy. I’ve played in clans in Quakeworld, CS, ET and ETQW. Brink was over pretty quickly.

Some of these ideas are from these forums and some are mine. If we would be talking only about duels and clan matches, we could easily just say that wins are all that matters. But when public games are brought in to this, we have to come up with something complex and here’s one suggestion.

The idea would be that the game tracks what level of players I’m encountering in duels and what level of team I’m playing against compared to my own team. At the end of the map the game would calculate if my rank increased or decreased based on my performance.

So every player has his personal rank (think SC2 bronze, diamond, master etc) and teams have their team rank based on the average. Any possible player changes would be monitored throughout the map and team ranks would change if someone joins or leaves. Player’s rank wouldn’t update until the map is over. I personally think it would be better if player ranks and team ranks would be visible to all so that teams could be balanced easier in public games, but I do understand the reasons why some people don’t like this idea.

If the other team is stacked with better players so that their team rank is a lot higher than my teams, then my rank wouldn’t decrease because the winning chances were zero. However my rank could increase if I did exceptionally well against the better team.

The rank would include two skills: player skill and objective skill. These two could be combined into xp if such is wanted, but only for the duration of the game session.

  • Player skill would include your damage done/damage taken, accuracy, headshot accuracy and damage done/min. This player skill would increase or decrease based on the player’s rank that you killed/wounded. You don’t have to get a kill to increase the player skill. Although a small bonus from the kill might be in place.
  • Objective skill would include the map score (win or loss), completed objectives and class points/min. This would increase or decrease based on the other team’s rank. The whole team gets points from victory and objectives. There would be no penalties or bonus if the player was away from the objective because the game doesn’t know which area is right and which is wrong.

If there’s a player that does objectives perfectly but never kills anyone, he can only get rank 3. The pure godly shooters who never bother to do any objectives can only get rank 7. The game’s max rank would be 10 and these players can do everything perfectly. Objective skill is easier and faster to master so that’s why it matters a bit less.

The stats would be collected from public and competitive games but it would be nice to see them separately on a stats page if I want to. It’s easier to get kills, better accuracy, better objective points etc in public games because you can always find weaker players than yourself there, regardless of your own skill level. In competitive games the teams are usually pretty equally skilled.

I think we have to see atleast player’s own stats in great detail at the end of the map, even if they are a bit hidden on the second page. Kills, deaths, damage done, damage taken, accuracy, headshots, headshots accuracy, team damage done, team damage taken, gibs, class stats etc etc. The more stats the better :). This helps the new (and older too) player to improve himself when he sees his performance in numbers. This could also help when recruiting new players.

However all this skill measuring is useless if the game itself doesn’t support improvement of player’s skills (hi etqw, brink). By this I mean learning the weapons and their spread as well as new maps and classes. Maps and classes can be learned quickly as said before but it can take a really long time to learn the weapons perfectly. Hopefully it takes months to learn them and this usually tells that the game is designed to last for years. As an example you could learn the random spreads in Brink in a week and you could tell that you could never learn to shoot them accurately because the game doesn’t allow it. This only motivates the player to seek a new game to play.

Lately the theme in games has been that nearly anybody can kill the other player somehow. Players are given assistances like vehicles, turrets, random spreads in weapons etc to get the kills easier. With these the player feels good for a while although these are not a result of long-term training. If the idea is that the game is played for years, and I understood that SD has set that as their goal, then the game has to be designed completely around competetive matches. The most recent example might be SC2 where the game is mostly tested with progamers (correct me if I’m wrong about this) to get the perfect balance in game. The game has to have progamers so that new players can look up to them and practise and hope that one day they can also be as good.

I’m really hoping that the next SD game is like this and also isn’t released too early like basically every one of their games previously. If the gameplay is polished, then there’s no need for promod to fix spread, lag, bugs, hitreg, hitboxes etc like previously.

I also have some thoughts about maps but I think this was long enough and maybe a bit off topic at the end. I also have to try these :stroggtapir::penguin::stroggbanana:

(tokamak) #384

I feel this thread should be about it’s original topic. Anything else is off-topic and only serves to pollute a valuable debate. Get yourself a new thread so everyone can weigh in on the otherwise interesting discussion you got going on.

And don’t you worry, I’ll have this thread back on the rails in no time if no one else brings forth anything about skill-indication. It’s just that you won’t like the centroid of the discussion then.

(Breo) #385

I think I have a nice solution track all the stats and let players decide what to show for example if you want to play objects you can choose to only show object related stats (XP, SPM, amount of object etc.)?

(SockDog) #386

While stats can promote some very negative behaviour I think if they’re implemented in a smart way they can offer value outside of the game. Putting analytical tools into a website for people to explore and track their performance could be a nice bullet point for a game. It’d also give a sheen of professionalism to the game rather than making it out to be some yeehaw pew pew thing. I’d probably stay to steer clear of leaderboards relating to stats, again to minimise a motivation to better a single statm, rather than play well. As mentioned earlier, the inclusion of more and bigger challenges outside of the core game could allow for leaderboards and separate stats to exist and satisfy the e-peen strokers amongst us.

To repeat I think that in game, recognition would be best served with an idea Sponge floated. That of selected random achievements that the server picks to highlight at the end of the match. This way someone can be recognised for great accuracy or most kills but because it’s not assured that achievement would be picked they’d be less inclined to spend a match solely focusing on it. Such a system could also record video clips during the match and do some sort of actual highlight reel at the end of a game or simply upload them to a website.

Which again brings us back to a game with less motivation for imbalanced teams or exploitative play just to inflate a number. It could work.

(Humate) #387

To repeat I think that in game, recognition would be best served with an idea Sponge floated. That of selected random achievements that the server picks to highlight at the end of the match. This way someone can be recognised for great accuracy or most kills but because it’s not assured that achievement would be picked they’d be less inclined to spend a match solely focusing on it.

Thats an interesting idea.

However if I happen to value accuracy and I suck at it, I still would want to see who had the best accuracy.
Also I would want to give them kudos. I find it to be a wonderful bonding experience. :magicpony:

(SockDog) #388

Well in that case you may want to hear my fantastic idea about end of match kudos system. :slight_smile:

(Humate) #389

That would be marvellous.

edit: :magicpony:

(tokamak) #390

I think it’s useful to discern between skillset variables tracked (which can be as detailed as possible for all I care) and skillsets displayed and lauded (IE tracked on a ladder and featured in specific ways).

There’s nothing wrong with having a personal file with all the statistics included. A more distilled version can be publicly displayed on a site and should you want to share the more complete file with someone you can have a personalised url to keep your grandparents and neighbours up to date on your progress. You could even have a FB app that shares a weekly report about your plays with others (friends at your discretion).

I don’t think anyone can have an issue with that. It’s all possible and it’s all good fun. But it still doesn’t bring us much closer to the which statistic (or multiple) should be featured and laddered.

You could say ‘well, ANY statistic can be turned into a ladder’. True, that way you can have a ladder for the highest accuracy with a reflex-sighted, muzzle-braked, front-gripped GERUND with a high capacity clip as a medic on the Airport map. And of course ladders for every other possible combination.

But would such a ladder be really meaningful? I would say that although it would be very useful to have a personal file with statistics this detailed (it would be awesome to see how well you do with each weapon set out against each map), an actual ladder would be completely meaningless and the existence of such a ladder (along with the valley laps ladder) would cheapen the value of more important ladders.

Yeah I’m being absurd again, but I’m merely pointing out through this that you need to draw the line somewhere. From absurdly detailed ladders you start more general ladders like best player per map and even more general, stats like accuracy, kills, k/d and whatnot.

The point is, each ladder you add makes the other ladders less prestigious and less important. Another thing is, the more detailed the variable is, the easier it is to artificially inflate. I could limit myself to a few secure hits on a particular map to be the star of that ladder. Or even more extreme, I could limit myself to a few secure hits in the entire game to be the most accurate player ever just because somehow I really want to impress Humate and receive his fan-mail.

Is it really preferable to let players decide which ever statistic to value most? I think not. If it’s an ET style game, then it’s very clear that there are more useful and less useful statistics. Being the most accurate player doesn’t win you the game. And although a k/d would mean everything in a team deathmatch (the indicator would capture the entire player’s worth), in an assault based mode it’s merely a contributing skillset to excel in and wouldn’t directly determine your contribution to a victory.

Granted, a k/d isn’t as easily paddable as accuracy, but focusing on it and trying to increase that number can still potentially lead to ways of playing that aren’t optimal to winning the actual game. A player would forego risky situations required to complete an objective to keep his k/d train going. And the same works for any simple variable in different degrees.

Match highlights would solve this. The highlights shouldn’t be random but weighted. IE, more useful statistics would have more weight than less useful statistics so particular feats in the less useful department would have to be more impressive in order to have the same chance of being featured as the more important variables.

But either way, the notion that there’s only a chance of having a particular aspect of your play displayed and celebrated at the end of the match will discourage players to distract over a particular variable to inflate and instead focus more on the entire game. I like it.

(ailmanki) #391

Here another approach to get the players skill, though that development just started.
http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=47832

Aimbots pose a real problem for multiplayer FPS games like Quake and Counter Strike. The first aimbots were rather crude, their use could be detected and the players using it banned. Unfortunately, aimbots have become much more sophisticated. Some of the best ones are hardly distinguishable from very good professional players based on their aiming behavior.

Anti-cheat techniques (e.g. Punkbuster) are not very effective against aimbots because of a steady stream of new aimbots released. Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBN) have been shown to detect aimbots with high efficiency (> 95 %). However, because DBNs rely on statistical comparison of the behavior of normal and cheating players, their effectiveness diminishes as aimbots mimic human behavior better and better. At some point aimbots will become practically indistinguishable from real players. When this happens there will be no way to tell whether a player is using an aimbot or not.

The main problem with aimbots is that they destroy the game of honest people. There are many examples of players abandoning servers because of aimbotters dominating the matches. Why do the players really abandon these servers? The simple answer is that they have no chance at all agains aimbotters who will own the server. To turn this logic around: Why would anyone care about aimbotters playing on a server if they did not automatically have a huge unfair advantage?

IMO the solution is a scheme that have been universally adopted in sports: a tiered competition system. Sportsmen are categorized according to their previously demonstrated skills and they are not allowed to compete in leagues below their class (except in open tournaments in which anybody can participate).

(tokamak) #392

“Simply using an aimbot does not make someone a great player. Aimbotters are usually lame (the main reason why they use aimbots to begin with). They can be consistently beaten using superior skills in navigation, tactics and strategic planning.”

IE, he already acknowledges that as an skill indicator alone it’s insufficient. It’s there to put aimbotters against better players, whatever the point of that is.

(DJScream) #393

Continuing a bit on my previous post. I think this isn’t off topic because everything needs to support the ranking system for it to work and I think for example the current map design wouldn’t work well enough.

I would also like to note to my previous post that rocket launchers, grenades, turrets, vehicles etc are not included in player skill. They would need to have their own stats and multipliers.

One important thing is that the maps need to favor the attackers. Guessing numbers here but I think the attacking team should win 70% of matches when against an equally skilled team. So that would be opposite to what SD has done previously. Since ET the maps have been very biased for the defenders. Guessing again that 80% of matches go to defenders with equally skilled teams (the correct number might be closer to 100% but I’m being merciful :). It’s harder to find out the skill differences between players and teams in maps where any team can get a fullhold. Also the offensive map design would reduce spawn camping because usually the attackers are the victims.

Another improvement would be to make public games also stopwatches so the stacking and too quick games wouldn’t become too big of a problem. Then these same maps could also be used in competetive matches. Previously the default maps have been mostly easy fullhold maps and no one wants them in comp matches. Map durations need to be pretty short (about 10-15 min) so that players in public games don’t leave after defending a full 30 minutes and then are asked to play the same map again. Stopwatch would also help to make the rankings more accurate because both teams get to defend the map (or attack if that’s easier).

I do understand that it must be very hard to design maps that have to work in smaller 5vs5 matches and in considerably larger public games. Usually it seems that map might be decent in 3vs3 and 5vs5 but turns into a ridiculously easy fullhold in public games.

I don’t want to sound too negative all the time so I have to credit SD for improving classes and maps in some areas. Every class feels more useful than they were in ET. In maps the defenders no longer spawn at the flag or the objective. I honestly think they have lots of great ideas (I really liked SMART as and idea), maybe even too much because it seems that’s why the core game suffers when most of the development time goes on these ideas. Maybe the bigger development team helps with this in the future.

I’d really love if it would be possible to make a game where lag wouldn’t disturb our shots too much. Meaning that it wouldn’t matter where in Europe the server was, you could still hit your target. I wouldn’t mind if the game is as ugly as hell if it’s just smooth. :slight_smile:

I’ve pretty much always had this opinion that lean and hitsounds shouldn’t be in ET style games. Leaning is for the slower paced games like CS and hitsounds are just a great learning tool but shouldn’t be included in competitive matches. Good players don’t need such helps. If leaning seems mandatory nowadays to get more players to try the game, then atleast make it so that you can’t shoot or move when leaning (and of course your head shows when doing it, unlike in ET :tongue:.

A game with perfect gameplay can be very fun to play. There’s no need for all the extra stuff.

(shirosae) #394

A game mode in which the point is to achieve some sort of twisted stat-meddling gameplay? Might be fun to try a silly unserious game mode like that. I imagine it’d be a bit like the tk-fest Hoggin’ maps on ETQW Nirvana.

It’s not so much that I feel cheated, as much as it is that I feel like I’m not playing the game any more. It’s like Brink’s lottery spread. I aim and shoot, and the effort doesn’t really have any influence on the outcome. I act more like a chauffeur for an automated system than a player. As soon as you introduce mechanisms which alter gameplay to the extent that they allow bad players to win, I’m no longer playing against players, but playing against some automated bot.

Honestly, I think that if you’re going to alter gameplay mechanisms based on winning/losing, you might as well just replace leaving players with a bot, rather than taking all the players and filtering their interactions through a bot. At least then a fair battleground has a possibility of surviving.

The W/L thing I concede; ideally ratings are things that you can’t refuse delivery of by alt-f4ing. Matches won/matches started, then.

If your system is going to change gameplay mechanisms, like alter weapon spread or spawn times or health or spawn locations or anything that does enough to be effective when the teams are imbalanced, they’re also going to function when the teams are balanced and one side is just beating the other.

This isn’t like some resignation that we need to rely on people to balance games. It’s an active choice; I want people to balance games. Some people are losers who don’t get that games are most fun when balanced. No amount of XP reward or game director is going to change that. At least this way, the game starts to suck when stuff is unbalanced. If you had an automated system in place which was effective at balancing the game so that matches were always tied or nearly tied, would there be any reason for players to even try to balance the game?

I think the most you can do is try to design your game mechanics so that there’s the least benefit from doing obnoxious stuff.

(tokamak) #395

A proper skill indication system doesn’t need balanced game mechanics in order to work. It measures how well players cope within the confines of the rules. It should be possible to apply it to a terribly constructed game and still show who’s doing well.

That doesn’t mean the game mechanics aren’t important. Far from it, but it does mean that the discussion is best reserved for a different thread altogether.

(DJScream) #396

I sort of agree with the skill system working in any game but it can be hard to measure different skill levels properly if the game is all about randomness. I aim at the enemy’s head and the shots go all over the place. It’s like when an engineer goes to build that bridge and sometimes his wrench just drops on the ground for few seconds and he can’t do anything. He can just look at it and hope he gets it back at some point. He has absolutely no control over it. This is why I’m also one of those guys that want very very accurate guns so that I can feel that I’m in control of my actions.

(tokamak) #397

Sure! If the game is worthless then so is the skill-indicator. But a good game can still have a bad skill-indicator. Right now you’re discussing what you want to see happening in the gameplay and not the way that gameplay should be observed.

(SockDog) #398

[QUOTE=Humate;404203]That would be marvellous.

edit: :magicpony:[/QUOTE]

In short, at the end of the match you get to vote for your Most Valued Player and maybe even a least valued one. This would give some real life recognition to individuals from their team or even the opposing team. IMO it allows you to recognise even the smallest action and reinforce it with a player. Say for example that when you was doing a plant and this guy just comes out of nowhere an keeps the enemy off your back long enough to plant and win the match. You can recognise that, say how much it helped. Now that guy may have been nowhere on the leaderboards but he gains recognition for a positive action during the game.

Would players buy into it or just abuse it. I’m not totally sure but if we’re going for utopian ideas then this is something I’d love to see built upon the old GG at the end of a match.

[QUOTE=shirosae;404218]A game mode in which the point is to achieve some sort of twisted stat-meddling gameplay? Might be fun to try a silly unserious game mode like that. I imagine it’d be a bit like the tk-fest Hoggin’ maps on ETQW Nirvana.

It’s not so much that I feel cheated, as much as it is that I feel like I’m not playing the game any more. It’s like Brink’s lottery spread. I aim and shoot, and the effort doesn’t really have any influence on the outcome. I act more like a chauffeur for an automated system than a player. As soon as you introduce mechanisms which alter gameplay to the extent that they allow bad players to win, I’m no longer playing against players, but playing against some automated bot.[/quote]

I guess we’re maybe looking at this from different ends of the spectrum. I’m trying to create an environment where both sides are challenged over a period of time, sort of a co-op competitive mode. Whereas I think you’re saying that the enjoyment comes, in the majority, from winning or trying to win. I get that and it’s probably the biggest hurdle for something like this to overcome, it’s making me think more and more that this would need to be trailed alongside something else. Where people can opt into the experience rather than feel force and rail against it regardless of how it plays.

I also don’t think this should be something that allows a poor team to win. It’s more a handicap system based on live data. Reactive matchmaking if we want to make up names. It should in the most part bring teams to a closer level so that a game can be played out without either side being impacted by real world practicalities.

This actually gives me another idea. Perhaps a different approach would be to take an individual’s “skill score” (I still don’t agree with that but I’m brainstorming here) and when a player joins a server the AI does a calculation based on the teams overall skill score and then makes adjustments from that point. This then wouldn’t impact the actual results during play but instead just ensure teams remain balance during play. As I typed that I thought of some issues/exploits but what the hell brainstorming isn’t meant to be perfect. :slight_smile:

Honestly, I think that if you’re going to alter gameplay mechanisms based on winning/losing, you might as well just replace leaving players with a bot, rather than taking all the players and filtering their interactions through a bot. At least then a fair battleground has a possibility of surviving.

The W/L thing I concede; ideally ratings are things that you can’t refuse delivery of by alt-f4ing. Matches won/matches started, then.

It has to be pointed out that right now the battleground is constantly being changed but only in the respect of the winning team. Score more XP, get better unlocks, become more useful, become more powerful. I’m just trying to turn that idea that good players need better things while bad ones don’t. There is only so far that you can take the whole, L2P, idea, especially when at times it’s simply a matter of luck in whether you’ll be on a good or bad team.

If your system is going to change gameplay mechanisms, like alter weapon spread or spawn times or health or spawn locations or anything that does enough to be effective when the teams are imbalanced, they’re also going to function when the teams are balanced and one side is just beating the other.

This isn’t like some resignation that we need to rely on people to balance games. It’s an active choice; I want people to balance games. Some people are losers who don’t get that games are most fun when balanced. No amount of XP reward or game director is going to change that. At least this way, the game starts to suck when stuff is unbalanced. If you had an automated system in place which was effective at balancing the game so that matches were always tied or nearly tied, would there be any reason for players to even try to balance the game?

I think the most you can do is try to design your game mechanics so that there’s the least benefit from doing obnoxious stuff.

Well I’ve said that such a system wouldn’t grant permanent changes and any changes would be triggered on a stepping scale so there there is wiggle room aplenty between teams where no chances occur or only occur in equal measures (ie, both teams get access to new weapons etc).

I’m totally with you on it being best done by people, I honestly wish it could. It would be awesome if there was a way to shuffle an entire playerbase with accurate team balancing then build a match around that, even filling in gaps as people left. But it’s probably not going to be possible for a very very long time. :slight_smile:

Problem is players are ultimately dicks and don’t balance for ****. They’re happy being on the winning team, rage if they’re on the losing team. Even if you’re not one of those players you end up impacted by that behaviour. There are work arounds but they’re not solutions. Ultimately what I’m talking about is meant to replace the XP system and a dependancy on measuring individuals and trying to link that to their value in the team and so distributing upgrades, instead it allows an AI system to do it based on team performance. I sort of corrupted that a little in order to leverage in this balancing redundancy.

You’ve convinced me there are serious problems with it, if nothing else your perception of the idea is a valid concern, and yet I’d still love to see how it would play out. Ultimately I game for fun, if we could round off the rough corners of playing online and still let skill be a deciding factor then I think we’d see a lot more good matches. :slight_smile:

(Breo) #399

[QUOTE=SockDog;404224]
Problem is players are ultimately dicks and don’t balance for ****. They’re happy being on the winning team, rage if they’re on the losing team. Even if you’re not one of those players you end up impacted by that behaviour. There are work arounds but they’re not solutions.[/QUOTE]

In some games the server pick the team for you and every match it shuffle the players.
Also the last joiner should move to the other team when it’s outnumbered. This makes the matches unpredictable and more fun.

(SockDog) #400

[QUOTE=Breo;404228]In some games the server pick the team for you and every match it shuffle the players.
Also the last joiner should move to the other team when it’s outnumbered. This makes the matches unpredictable and more fun.[/QUOTE]

I’ve seen this fail many times and in many ways. Shuffle is probably only useful to break an already obvious team stack or poor team configuration and it does so by only randomly moving players. At times you could have two very skilled players constantly throw games down the toilet because they’re on the same team and even after several awkward, distracting and server destroying shuffles they could still be on the same team or they just quit.

This is why I keep coming back to modifying the game and not the players. Because even with the most accurate skill point system you still don’t know how that player is feeling, are they out for a relaxing game, practice or full on focused slaughter.

I’m not making out here that MP games are broken, just that they have issues and these traditional solutions and the mechanics behind them have been proven time and again to not work.