Real concerns over Brinks Rank system

(shirosae) #81

If I’m a new player, here are the things which are likely to scare me away from a game:

[ul]
[li]Being shot in the face so quickly that I can’t even touch the learning curve and spend most of my time in a respawn queue waiting.[/li][/ul]

Someone completing the objectives and winning the game? Not so much.

If the sole point of the ranking system is to prevent skilled players from dominating new players until the new players give up, you could probably just have rank = (headshots x target’s rank)/(shots fired) and it’d do the job about as well as anything else.

If you’re trying to do a bit more and match up types of players, rather than just put everyone on a pro/scrub line, then yeah, I can see the point of having other variables. For example, if you’re a player who puts effort into doing objectives but aren’t the best shot, you get put together with other people like you.

You’d had to have played on very sheltered servers, though, not to understand that superior aim is the most frustrating, difficult and off-putting thing to come against in an enemy.

(tokamak) #82

[QUOTE=MILFandCookies;220161]And if you’re trying to demonstrate that you lack the social skills to participate on a board, then likewise.
Nonetheless I was suggesting that you aren’t qualified to define what constitutes skill and what doesn’t.
You arent qualified to make any formulas - as you wouldnt know what skill was if it hit you in the face.

Passive enough for you?[/QUOTE]

Much, much better. Even though mods wouldn’t agree I would really prefer it if people actually just said what they mean instead of constantly trying to hint at it or try to convey their points through anonymous tags.

Maybe I’m not qualified to define what constitutes skill and what doesn’t. Not my point, I was arguing for that if it could be defined it should be visible in xp and distributed as such.

Maybe I’m not qualified to make any formula, I didn’t even try to though I would love to sit down and have a go at it if I knew more about the game. The details and the variables of the formula were -again- not my point, I said that IF darkangel’s model would work, then it would only show that xp by itself wasn’t accurate enough and therefore the formula should be integrated into the xp distribution system so it wouldn’t need any post-calculations.

I do however know that skill isn’t defined by aiming any more than mid-air obliterator hits. You can occupy yourself with the most amazing feats all day long, if it doesn’t get you closer to completing or defending the objectives, it’s just a waste of time and energy.

[QUOTE=shirosae;220170]If I’m a new player, here are the things which are likely to scare me away from a game:

[ul]
[li]Being shot in the face so quickly that I can’t even touch the learning curve and spend most of my time in a respawn queue waiting.[/li][/ul]

Someone completing the objectives and winning the game? Not so much.[/QUOTE]

Lemmings trying to do timed runs turning the game into 2 minute matches can be just as off-putting.

(Apoc) #83

I dont like the way that doing the objective yourself is a measure of skill, all your doing in most things is just putting a charge on a door or something. Whereas less emphasis is being put on killing people. Does no one realise that you cant plant if there is a large group of enemies standing in front of the objective?
Peoples attitudes are similar in etqw, i very very very rarely do objectives (occassonally databrains) but i do kill alot, for this i get critisized as not being a team player, however my team usually wins, and my team-mates rarely see the link between me killing the enemy team and the objectives somehow becoming easier to do…
But this isnt a personal rant, its about how the rank system would work, since from what i hear doing objectives gets far more xp than killing, and xp seems to be how people are working out rank, it is frustrating to see that the person who has cleared out the whole area, killed the majority of enemies, probably revived the objective do-er many times, gets far less xp and therefor lower rank than the guy who just ran through (due to your killing) and planted a charge on a wall, a task requiring all of 3 keys.

Rant over lol

(tokamak) #84

In that way XP can be expanded by rewarding bonus xp for being near an objective when it’s completed, having revived or buffed a player that has just completed an objective etc. It would take away the focus from the objective-doers and give a bit more attention to the support.

(murka) #85

xp per kill=base exp/range from enemy to obj. But also a max and min value in case enemy is 0.0000001m away from obj and gets infinite exp.
This pretty much should cover it methinks.

(Qhullu) #86

[QUOTE=shirosae;220170]
You’d had to have played on very sheltered servers, though, not to understand that superior aim is the most frustrating, difficult and off-putting thing to come against in an enemy.[/QUOTE]
it works both ways though. if you’re too good for a server, playing there is just boring sooner or later, and if you’re too bad, it’s frustrating. so people tend to favor servers where the skill level is close to their own.

automating the process is hard to do in team games where the dynamics of a match are practically infinitely complex due to the butterfly effect. so when it comes to achieving an objective, an engineer building it might be a trivial thing compared to someone sneaking behind enemy lines and killing a medic on their way there to revive some of the defending team for example.

it is possible to assign superficial values to peoples actions yes, but that will lead to a superficial assesment of skill, which may be good enough but will lead to some people complaining about broken matchmaking sometimes.

a simpler way to do a matchmaking system would be to just to ask people to set their own skill level and base it on that. kind of like difficulty levels in single player games.

edit: yea basically what Apoc said, was making tea while writing that…

(signofzeta) #87

I guess the objective based gameplay can be similar to a game of hockey, where killing people is bodychecking people, and completing objectives is scoring goals. As long as bodychecking people allows you to score goals, then I’d say that is good teamwork. This kind of stuff does not happen in real life hockey, but it is a good team tactic to use in NHL 10, especially if you have 4 user controlled players on the same team.

(shirosae) #88

I agree, but it’s been stated that the point of the ranking matching thing is mostly to stop experienced playing smashing newbies in the face, not to stop them getting bored.

If the point of the system is to stop newbies getting smashed in the face, then that’s all the matchmaking algorithm should be taking account of, if you see what I mean.

Instead the thread has derailed into a discussion about what constitutes a valuable player - which is fine; I’m all for conversation mutation, but it’s apparently not what the matchmaking system is about.

If you want to argue that the match making system should have a wider focus - well, I wouldn’t disagree with you. I just think it’s a bit silly that people are talking about the match-making like it’s supposed to quantify your value as a player when it’s apparently been designed to do something else entirely.

(DarkangelUK) #89

If they can’t plant, they don’t complete the objective therefore there is no emphasis to worry about… if someone managed to evade a full team of enemies and complete an objective by any other means, then there’s skill involved there regardless.

(tokamak) #90

[QUOTE=shirosae;220188]I agree, but it’s been stated that the point of the ranking matching thing is mostly to stop experienced playing smashing newbies in the face, not to stop them getting bored.

If the point of the system is to stop newbies getting smashed in the face, then that’s all the matchmaking algorithm should be taking account of, if you see what I mean.[/QUOTE]

Agreed, and that’s where xp/hour is ideal. It would also prevent crappy players who just happened to play a lot to be chucked in with elite veterans.

(Qhullu) #91

[QUOTE=shirosae;220188]I agree, but it’s been stated that the point of the ranking matching thing is mostly to stop experienced playing smashing newbies in the face, not to stop them getting bored.

If the point of the system is to stop newbies getting smashed in the face, then that’s all the matchmaking algorithm should be taking account of, if you see what I mean.[/QUOTE]

Essentially. Games are roughly matched to the host’s rank/XP unless otherwise specified by said host.

i read that as saying it does more than just separates “newbies” from the rest. essentially rank/XP should be relatively accurate representation of the skill level of a person, otherwise some people will perceive the system as being broken. doesn’t affect me since i’ll be searching for my facourite servers manually, but it will matter for example on the consoles, and for people who don’t want to look for servers they like manually.

(Voxie) #92

Why not make the matchmaking system adaptive in the way that if it hasn’t been able to gather a full team after X seconds it becomes less picky about players’ skill and distance from each other? That way you’ll always be able to enter a game even if there’s relatively few players online at any given time – with the downside that you might face a few players more/less skilled than yourself as well as a few high ping bastards. This would of course be a gradual change over time spent waiting; just because you’ve been in the lobby for 43 seconds doesn’t mean some ultra-skilled chump from the other side of the world will join.
This seems like a good balance between leveling the playing field and making sure the matchmaking service always works.

Also, gotta love those tags. I guess someone added them shortly after taking the bus home from kindergarten. Try to eat less crayons next time and maybe you won’t be so grumpy!

(tinManz) #93

I think whats so great about Brink is the structural difference between a game such as MW where the most experience means the most skills instead of how well you can preform as a key advisory within your team. Rather than having a player go on a 81-8 game with 2 Chopper Gunners, Brink has you blowing up pathways and suppressing the enemy enough for your team to advance. It allows for players who were never the guy that could bhop mad good or head shot like a bot to still be just as lethal and threatening to the other team. Even if the system were to be somewhat broken, new starting players over the learning curve should still be a valid factor hot shot’s would have to consider if they want to win.

(tokamak) #94

One can always dream:

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/misc/battlenet.xml

(darthmob) #95

I’d say it’s more a system to match experience and less to match skill. Time played or XP accumulated should be sufficient to say if someone knows what he has to do ingame or not. Matching skill is an entirely different thing and way more complex.

I just hope the purpose of the system will be clear ingame (it obviously isn’t right now as seen with this discussion). Nothing worse than people whining about not matching skills when there was no matching whatsoever.

(Dormamu) #96

I really hope for “No matchmaking system” in the hardcore mode :D, for no one to held your hand, no pat on the back when you fail, for a real MFK hardcore mode, a real nightmare for ZaNoob’s like me :smiley:

(H0RSE) #97

what is this ‘hardcore mode’? was this even confirmed? I though that ‘hardcore mode’ was just selecting which options you want in the server browser, and joining those games.

(tokamak) #98

Just independent servers indeed, if they want to feel better by calling it hardcore then so be it. Reminds me of WoW where roleplay specific realms were flooded by ‘hardcore’ players just because they liked the red coloured names in the server selection list all the roleplayers then begged Blizzard to give those realms a pink colour in the list.

(Bobalicious) #99

I’d say a fair way to calculate the veteran players from the newbie players would be through accuracy… So basically the less shots you miss, the more higher your accuracy will be. Then whatever your accuracy is, you will play against players with similar accuracy.

(tokamak) #100

For more simple shooters like CS and UT that would be true, but in these class based objective shooters you can be on top of the scoreboard without firing a single shot.

And sometimes it’s good to not be firing without hitting. Think a mini-gun laying down suppressing fire down a corridor. There will always be a bias towards certain play styles.