Server Browser Servers - Skill Balance

[rosskii]

I just had a few months break from dirty bomb, and I’ve just come back and jumped into a public match. What I saw, made me realize what is fundermentally wrong with this game and I would like to provide a few suggestions on how I think it could be corrected.

Problem: A server with e.g. 8 players with ranks over 100, and a few players with ranks of around 10. This kind of thing wont do the game any good because the pro’s will get bored, the noobs will get frustrated, its a lose \ lose. New players need to play against new players, they are not testing their skill at their stage of progression, they are learning the maps and getting a feel for the game. Pro’s will enjoy the game more if they have people in their team who know how to actually repair shit and revive once in a while xD

Solution? Well I’ve seen a concept that worked in a game called APB. You have dynamic skill raitings on servers, instead of allocating fixed amounts of servers in the past like min level 10 etc you just have them all dynamic. So, for example, in a server with 10 players with an average level of 100, then you could change the name (and maybe color) of the server to e.g. “blah blah [cobalt]”. Average of 70, [Gold], 40 [silver], 10 [bronze]… whatever they are just example numbers. Then only allow players to join servers which are either matching their skill level, or 1 above \ 1 below.
Then make servers with under 5 players unranked, so that freinds can play together, once more players join the server gets a rank but nobody gets kicked. Once you’re in, you’re in.

The servers would be dynamic because if a few good players left and some less skilled players replaced them, the average raiting would drop and so the server should then rename itself, e.g. from gold to silver.

Public games are important, its where new players practice, its where good players go if they want a quick game or have no mates online to play competitve.

If anybody agreed please show support to the idea. If you have any suggestions or disagree with anything then comment your views… :*

[K1X455]

what if you didn’t know their levels?

[zykeroth]

There is no real balancing on the Server Browser servers as it’s all a drop-in-drop-out system to get you games as fast as possible. You’d be surprised how many people just stack on the high level team to have easy games. Adding the guaranteed amount of leavers on the losing side and the ability to switch sides to the equation, and you got the regularly unbalanced Server Browser matches. If you live in EU or NA you have CMM for Objective mode. The rest of the regions unfortunately don’t have the playerbase to support any kind of matchmaking.

Perhaps something like your suggestion could be done.

[STARRYSOCK]

@K1X455 said:
what if you didn’t know their levels?

Then people would still complain with hours played, exactly like it is in CMM, lol

[phobiatic]

@STARRYSOCK said:

@K1X455 said:
what if you didn’t know their levels?

Then people would still complain with hours played, exactly like it is in CMM, lol

Set your steam profile to friends or private and they wont see your playtime. This you have in your hands and is not an issue for the devs.

Levels is just a number for personal goals and to add a feel of progression. People focus too much on them to a point they use it as an excuse for their or their team lesser performance.
Level of a player add no value to the match, it only add negative behavior like people blaming newer players in their team or the game is “unbalanced” because more high / low levels on one team etc. While they should focus on working together to win the match.

[rosskii]

Well, ELO is pretty easy to cacluate. I know they do it already for the competitive modes. They could easily use something like that for publics too.

Good players stacking wouldnt exist with this, because all players would be fairly equal. I think a team of level 50’s could beat a team with level 100’s, or at least give them a good game, but not if there is 1 or 2 level 10’s in the team. The levels is just an example, DB could calculate a raiting which could be used to set the skill level on a server.

Again, new players should only be playing with other new players otherwise they are not going to keep playing. Works both ways, pro’s will give up playing if they are forced to play with inexperienced players.

So you guys are arguing against this idea? you think it’s better to allow high skilled players to play in games with new players?

[n-x]

Sorting players by skill, isnt that what CMM is for? Isnt the server browser exactly for drop in and out games with hardly any “matchmaking” behind it?

That being said, with the low population I can see how this dynamic server skill range could work greatly. It would kind of take care of the weak point of server browser that you have level 2s playing with level 100s and the weak point of CMM, which is that all the lobbies get disolved after a game and you have to wait several minutes again for your next game.

Because of the nature of CMM of having to find games after a certain amount of time, with a low player base it basically throws everything it can get after a few minutes in the same game. I can see that your approach would let similiar skilled players find each other more organically.

The main problems I see with it are:

1. A level 45 player who plays a lot of PUGs will wipe the floor with a level 100 recreational pub player, but I guess this is an extreme case and could be neglected.

2. High level trolls/smurfs would exactly know where to go, to ruin beginner games.

[GatoCommodore]

like i said in the past a couple of times
i would like to pay to reduce my level in DB so i wont get judged by my skin and level but my skill and merit on the game.

thats why i kep playing with bronze and using worst merc i have to not get 1st place on score because newbies will come to the forum and then type:

“why there are level 90 in a game for level 10-20?”

do i ask for this? no. Do i like it? no.

There are no other way since the population will decline every post patch/new merc and only select few who are hard enough and less whiny stays.

These less whiny and hard enough to stay usually plays real good and are not defeatist.
these players are a joy to play with. These people who say GG when the game ends or add you because you play good and he/she wants to play with you again no matter the attacking/defending side.

the real question is: How do we retain these players?

[STARRYSOCK]

@phobiatic said:

@STARRYSOCK said:

@K1X455 said:
what if you didn’t know their levels?

Then people would still complain with hours played, exactly like it is in CMM, lol

Set your steam profile to friends or private and they wont see your playtime. This you have in your hands and is not an issue for the devs.

Levels is just a number for personal goals and to add a feel of progression. People focus too much on them to a point they use it as an excuse for their or their team lesser performance.
Level of a player add no value to the match, it only add negative behavior like people blaming newer players in their team or the game is “unbalanced” because more high / low levels on one team etc. While they should focus on working together to win the match.

It’s impractical to set your profile to private just for one game. If you don’t have anything on yours sure, go for it, but I’ve invested a lot in mine and like to use it to meet other people on steam. I’m definitely not alone in this.

And level is actually quite useful to know at the start of a match. Yes, level doesn’t equal skill, but it’s usually a good approximation of skill. Seeing a teammate’s level allows me to gauge how dependable they might be in their role and plan accordingly. For example, if an Aura is level 50, I probably don’t have to worry about them and can choose other mercs instead. But if that Aura is level 1, I may find myself needing to support them.
It’s actually so important to how I play the game that I find myself checking steam profiles for hours played instead.

Point being, there will always be salt. Levels are important and have more uses than just to complain. And considering how impractical it is to think everyone is going to set their profile to private, blaming levels on everything is just ridiculous. No, level does not directly equal skill, but it does mean more experience. And the more experience a player has, the better they usually are. Everyone always freaks out whenever someone mentions levels, but they’re not the root of all evil in DB. Having a vague expectation of your teammates before the match starts, even if it’s sometimes wrong, is very useful.
This coming from a level 120~ player who frequently gets sworn at for being overleveled.

[Eox]

New players are sick of being stomped by good players, but good players are sick of having to deal with new players on their own team in a constant basis. This is also a problem that can explain that whole stacking issue.

Reintroducing some Min/Max level servers could be a decent idea in order to allow for new players and vets alike more balanced match, but I also think that some efforts must be made on the older players’ end. Instead of warding them off, teaching them how to play decently would be a much better approach. Too few people stop on new players to tell them that they can drop ammo, cook grenades, or use the REVIVR to revive, including me. Sure there is some bad seeds that will just be obnoxious if you attempt to help them, but not all beginners are like that.

[OCB-Wildcard]

@Eox said:
New players are sick of being stomped by good players, but good players are sick of having to deal with new players on their own team in a constant basis. This is also a problem that can explain that whole stacking issue.

Reintroducing some Min/Max level servers could be a decent idea in order to allow for new players and vets alike more balanced match, but I also think that some efforts must be made on the older players’ end. Instead of warding them off, teaching them how to play decently would be a much better approach. Too few people stop on new players to tell them that they can drop ammo, cook grenades, or use the REVIVR to revive, including me. Sure there is some bad seeds that will just be obnoxious if you attempt to help them, but not all beginners are like that.

I personally do try to help and I do agree not all of them are like that. At the same time though I have to point out that you can only point out the same mistake to the same people so many times to no avail before it becomes frustrating and affects your perspective. So I do understand how someone can become rather disgruntled about the whole thing. Older players do need to rethink how they behave towards the newer players but at the same time we need to remember how garbage our tutorial is also.

There is no offline methods that actually teach them anything beyond basic controls and it creates these sorts of problems. I know some devs like to take the approach of assuming the players are smart enough to figure it out themselves but honestly we’re prolly safer assuming the opposite and then adjusting based on the results.

Min/Max servers helped in the past but only marginally. It is a patchwork fix that doesn’t address the root of the issue which is the game itself leaves too much up to the player to figure out on their own. The tutorial has been a crux on the newcomers ability to grasp anything beyond basic controls since this games inception and it needs to be given a rather comprehensive overhaul. Without fixing the base cause we are just imposing temporary fixes in an attempt to delay the inevitable, ultimately addressing nothing and furthering the problem.

TL;DR - We need an actual in-game system to at least reinforce certain concepts that are critical to gameplay and possibly give an offline mode for practice. At the same time veterans of the game need to step up and be willing to help newer players as well; since no tutorial or offline system will ever be effective enough at teaching these things in a way that will have the same effect as learning through practical application of the concepts.

[teflonlove]

@kii said:
Well, ELO is pretty easy to cacluate. I know they do it already for the competitive modes.

While it’s easy to calculate an Elo rating for a player based on win/loss I think it’s rather pointless in the context of DB.

To good, balanced game in DB you need two teams where all roles are filled with comparable players. Essentially the game would need to rate each player for each role (medic, engineer, fire support, …) and compose two teams where each role can be filled by comparably competent players.

AFAIK DB doesn’t do anything like that yet. It mostly computes the average of the (role independent) Elo ratings over all players in each team and then mumbles something simpleminded like “Yeah, both teams have an average Elo rating of silver officer, we are good to go”.

But even if it did consider a role rating, it would only work for ranked games assuming that each player tries to give their best and actually fill the intended role.

However when I play casual, I regularly want to practice mercs I’m less experienced with. So the game would say “hey, teflonlove is a decent medic, I match him with these people” only to watch in horror that I feel like playing Rhino today.

So going down the simple Elo rating road without further considerations and some options on preferred mercs is a recipe for the disaster we currently have.

[Eytham]

I thought I’d had my grain of salt.
I think the Cobalt/Gold/Silver/Bronze (let’s call it the “metallurgy” system for now) is the best idea. It allows people to not ruin games by not being good enough or too good for the others. I think there should alos be a Mix category where everyone can get against everyone for new and old players that are playing together or very quick match finding. I think your metallurgy level should be based on your earned badges as it is quite representative of how well you perform in games without being abusable by smurfs or super good new players. Let me explain. If a smurf gets in a game and starts beating the f*ck out of everyone, he’ll eventually get badges for it, wich will make him go higher in metallurgy, wich means he won’t be able to play with the lower skilled players. Though I am not sure if there should be a way to lower your metallurgy because it could be quite a pain in the ass and a way for smurfs to exploit it but it would also make your metallurgy level more precise. All of this system would allow for better team balance (based on equalizing the total levels of each teams player’s metallurgy levels) and could possible make possible the removal of team shuffles and team changing. Another thing is, party-ing up for metallurgy servers should be enabled with this system because everyone will be placed against equal M-level players. I think this is all I had to say.

Thanks for reading. I am open for feedback even though I don’t check my notifications very often.

Kindly, Eytham. :3

[stayfreshshoe]

Sounds like a cool idea (re-naming servers depending on the player pool). I don’t think this is possible for us, but I’ve passed the idea on to the server team to check out.

As for Server Browser (SB), it’s inherently floored due to the ease of it becoming unbalanced. In an ideal world, all players would be using CMM. A decent chunk of players consistently use SB and if they were to move across to CMM queues would be shorter and matches better balanced (spread the word). Our focus to solve this still falls to commercial release (or 1.0 release of DB) as with this there will be marketing and a ton of new players coming to the game.

[Eox]

@stayfreshshoe said:
Sounds like a cool idea (re-naming servers depending on the player pool). I don’t think this is possible for us, but I’ve passed the idea on to the server team to check out.

As for Server Browser (SB), it’s inherently floored due to the ease of it becoming unbalanced. In an ideal world, all players would be using CMM. A decent chunk of players consistently use SB and if they were to move across to CMM queues would be shorter and matches better balanced (spread the word). Our focus to solve this still falls to commercial release (or 1.0 release of DB) as with this there will be marketing and a ton of new players coming to the game.

The issue with CMM is that it has a terrible reputation for most players. I keep hearing everywhere that CMM is unbalanced mostly because people end up either against stomps or paired with low level groups that have more trouble to figure out what they should do, and it’s a very popular mindset if you see what I mean. If you queue with a party with a lot of players, it becomes extremely complicated to end up in a balanced game because the amount of parties with an amount of players above 4 is usually very rare.

In the end, the issue with CMM is pretty much the same issue you have with ranked : not enough players. Hence why you end up in unbalanced games. Players stop using CMM because they firmly believe the matchmaking is flawed, which makes CMM even less able to make balances games. Which upsets even more players, that would leave after that. It’s a vicious circle.

I think we should think about a way to make CMM more attractive a bit in the same way Ranked can give you some sweet stuff. How about making CMM more worth your time when it comes about credit or fragment income for exemple ? Maybe through the use of a CMM based event ?

[stayfreshshoe]

Nice thoughts @Eox. Will have a think and a few chats to see if there’s anything we can do along those lines.

Thanks bbe

[Lord_Coctus]

@Eox said:
I think we should think about a way to make CMM more attractive a bit in the same way Ranked can give you some sweet stuff. How about making CMM more worth your time when it comes about credit or fragment income for exemple ? Maybe through the use of a CMM based event ?

I personally like the idea, but there will always be people who will complain about it.
What I would like to add is a post match (mvp board) option that allows you to keep playing with any of your team/entire group who also picks the option as well.

[Eox]

@Lord_Coctus said:

@Eox said:
I think we should think about a way to make CMM more attractive a bit in the same way Ranked can give you some sweet stuff. How about making CMM more worth your time when it comes about credit or fragment income for exemple ? Maybe through the use of a CMM based event ?

I personally like the idea, but there will always be people who will complain about it.
What I would like to add is a post match (mvp board) option that allows you to keep playing with any of your team/entire group who also picks the option as well.

A bit like in OW ? Can’t be a bad idea.

[OCB-Wildcard]

@stayfreshshoe said:
Sounds like a cool idea (re-naming servers depending on the player pool). I don’t think this is possible for us, but I’ve passed the idea on to the server team to check out.

As for Server Browser (SB), it’s inherently floored due to the ease of it becoming unbalanced. In an ideal world, all players would be using CMM. A decent chunk of players consistently use SB and if they were to move across to CMM queues would be shorter and matches better balanced (spread the word). Our focus to solve this still falls to commercial release (or 1.0 release of DB) as with this there will be marketing and a ton of new players coming to the game.

Please make sure to address the extremely lackluster tutorials this game has too. I said it earlier and I’ll say it again: the introductory experience with this game leaves way too much up to the player to figure out completely on their own. Granted it won’t fix it on its own veterans have to step up to the plate and help out too but it will still make a dent in another factor that causes the balancing problems; players essentially running around like headless chickens with no clue what they’re doing.

I can say without a doubt that even if everyone used CMM you’d still hit the same issues; maybe on a lesser scale but it’ll still be there. The long-and-short of the matter is there are too many people without a grasp on certain concepts that make up the core of this games experience and are given no tools to learn them or even practice within a controlled environment. When you have that situation they’re forced to learn via trial-by-fire, throwing themselves to the wolves again and again til it sinks in while dragging down their team in the process. Most players from what I’ve seen don’t even make it that far because it is far too frustrating for them especially when paired against veterans of the game. Most veterans use the Server Browser because its what works for those of us just looking to get a quick game without having the obligation to stay. It allows us to keep searching on our own til we find a match that is even halfway decent and playable. CMM could become worthwhile but we’re a good ways away from even reaching such discussion because of continually overlooked flaws.

Ultimately this is why I said a more comprehensive tutorial and offline mode would help, but the veterans and general playerbase need to step up and help newcomers to learn also. Granted some might think some of the concepts are common sense but 3 years of it somehow going over most new players heads already suggests otherwise. I don’t like having to be the one pointing this out, as it is a deplorable realization but is unfortunately the reality of the matter, but it needs to be done. So we can sit here pretending that matchmaking systems alone will fix it or we can address the actual source of the problem; that people clearly aren’t being taught certain core concepts by the game, and therefore somehow manage to fail to put 2+2 together, leading to a large quantity of fresh players being left to flail on the hook and eventually quit out of frustration.

[FalC_16]

@stayfreshshoe said:
Sounds like a cool idea (re-naming servers depending on the player pool). I don’t think this is possible for us, but I’ve passed the idea on to the server team to check out.

As for Server Browser (SB), it’s inherently floored due to the ease of it becoming unbalanced. In an ideal world, all players would be using CMM. A decent chunk of players consistently use SB and if they were to move across to CMM queues would be shorter and matches better balanced (spread the word). Our focus to solve this still falls to commercial release (or 1.0 release of DB) as with this there will be marketing and a ton of new players coming to the game.

CMM only for v 1.0 confirmed. server browser should be a thing if the player population does not increase by the release of the game.