The case against matchmaking

(Humate) #21

Thats exactly my point. :slight_smile:
The system can be exploited quite easily.
It relies on the player to take the game seriously so their rating accurately reflects their skill level.
This happens all the time in sc2 as well. Its either an alias account, a shared account… or using a legit account and conceding games deliberately to play in the lower leagues.

(tokamak) #22

I don’t think SD would mind people exploiting the system by buying new copies of the game…

As for the rest, this system inherently can’t be ‘played’ by people pretending to be lower than they are because then they would need to keep losing. It doesn’t make any sense.

The only way it can be ‘played’ is when it’s about the quantity of games. At the bottom of the Blizzard ladder are just people leaving their games in turns so they get a vast quantity of games and thus a vast quantity of wins and thus their portraits faster.

Nobody minds though, it’s just a cosmetic thing they’re wasting their time on.

(Humate) #23

There was a thread of a player doing this very thing on TL.
He was bored of playing SC2 seriously so he dropped to the lower leagues, and documented his games where he took the piss out of all the players he went up against. I believe it was also posted on reddit as well.

(jazevec) #24

[QUOTE=Crispy;389474]
I disagree about ‘ego admins’: they are never enjoyable. A lot of what you describe can be accomplished without an admin via vote systems (all but the custom settings).[/quote]

In games I played, notably Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, voting never worked reliably. Votes like 12 vs 2 to kick someone would fail because of the very high threshold required. Yellow letters would appear on the side of the screen and obstruct view, so many people would just press “F1” or “F2” randomly to make go away, often producing a random vote. A small number of “no” people would be enough to make the vote fail. And that was with blatant aimbotters who would typically kill someone every second or 2 across the map, in through fog. Good luck passing a vote for something less serious, like map change. Or shuffle teams by xp.

[QUOTE=Crispy;389514]

[LIST]
[li]Matchmaking describes the system for streamlining the process of locating a multiplayer game that best fits the player’s needs and connecting to the server. Anything that happens after the player has connected generally doesn’t have anything to do with the matchmaking system.[/li][li]Matchmaking is essentially just like a filter query in a server browser. A list of specifications is made for game mode, or map, or team size, or latency threshold, or region, etc. and a list of matches is generated.[/li][/quote]

Essentially just like a filter query ? Doesn’t have anything to do with matchmaking ? Look at what you’ve said earlier:

It’s very unlikely that a MM implementation will try to very closely match your skill rating because that will generally take too long to find a match, or it will create too many servers, all with not enough players populating them.

If it automatically creates servers on the fly then of course does have to do with matchmaking and is the opposite of dedicated servers. Dedicated servers don’t create themselves on the fly. If I use a filter in a server browser, I end up in an actual (virtual) place with largely the same people. Matchmaking system might allow me to use the same criteria for searching, but if there are, say, 300 people looking for this kind of challenge and only 20 of them (usually fewer due to consolization of FPS) can fit on a server, I will probably end up in a very random mix of players. 20 out of 300. Meanwhile with the same 300 people and a system of dedicated servers, I’m probably going to be considering several servers at best. People stick together, even if some of them get better or worse. Matchmaking “community” is very volatile, as soon as someone gets better or worse he might as well be on another planet. Matchmaking is like attending parties at a railway station.

(list of stuff)

So many ifs and buts. Matchmaking may, matchmaking often… You are making an impression that a decent matchmaking system requires a good number of extra care and careful optimization. In other words, it’s easy to get it wrong. And - surprise - many developers really get it wrong, because they just copy what they see without deeper understanding (See: “World of Warcraft uses X, so we must have X”). I mean that because of its inherent complexity (And opacity ! The rules are usually anything but transparent !) matchmaking causes collateral damage. Cultural damage to other games, because devs copy it mindlessly.

Meanwhile dedicated servers are harder to get wrong, because they’re more basic. The way they work is transparent.

A similar issue is with achievements. I’ll grant you that achievements can be fun sometimes, especially if they’re skill-based and surprise you out of the blue. But that’s not what usually occurs. The last game with achievements I played was Quake Live. In that game, only one achievement tree is related to your skill, encouraging you to get better. The others (so a vast majority) require only patience, like getting X * 10^n frags.

This is how it’s usually done in the game developer world. They see a complex feature (achievements, matchmaking), they try to copy it, and they break it in the process.

(tokamak) #25

Meanwhile dedicated servers are harder to get wrong, because they’re more basic. The way they work is transparent.

Dedicated servers have abusive admins, clan invasions and team-stacking. I mean, fair is fair, match-making isn’t perfect but neither are the dedicated servers.

The main thing matchmaking has over dedicated servers is that matchmaking makes the matches more meaningful by tying a consequence to the outcome. I only see matchmaking as a means, I don’t really care all that much for fair games and the matchmaking process can be fairly rough in my book. What I do care about is the way those matches influence your rating.

(Humate) #26

Stick to regular GSP’s where the admins have to be nice.
Recently i jumped on a clan server in BF3, with all the clanners stacking one side.
I went 30-2. Next round they “auto-mixed” the teams and I went 6 - 15. They seemed to know my every move, and the reason was i had a few in my squad… and they were telling their clanners where I was on the map in their vent. Also upon inspecting the killcams they wouldnt kill their own members lololol.

As for making pub games more meaningful, theres not much you can do there imo.
Actually maybe im wrong there. Maybe the vast majority are stat / achievement wh0res.

(tangoliber) #27

I prefer a match browser to matchmaking for two big reasons.

  1. With a match browser, all games are visible to the player. They can choose based on rules, ping, number of players, etc. You know what sort of games are available are what aren’t. For those who just want to jump into a game, there is Quick Join.
    Matchmaking on the other hand is an invisible process. This can cause an issue, as with the PS3 version of Brink. Many players could not, and still could not get matches with real people unless they were joining friends. They don’t get the choice to join games with lower ping, for instance. They only get the choice to play with bots. With a match browser, everything is visible and the player can join what they prefer.
    Also, with matchmaking, you might leave a bad game, and then get put back in the same game when you search again. You don’t get the freedom to browse. See Killzone 2 (match browser) vs Killzone 3 (machmaking.) In KZ3, it was harder to get matches, and even harder to find decent matches.

  2. A match browser allows for more rule customization. Playlists standardize everything. See Killzone 2 vs Killzone 3. In Killzone 2, the standard settings were not considered balanced, but because there was a decent degree of customization, players were able to circumvent balance issues by disabling weapons, classes, objectives, or maps. In Killzone 3, you could only play with all classes/weapons unless it was a private, invite only match. As a result, players frustrated by the standard rules quit the game, instead of just playing in matches with altered rules.

The biggest thing, in my opinion, is that one cannot possibly argue that matchmaking was a good fit for Brink on PS3. It was a disaster, and it killed the community. Most people who tried to play online could only get bots, and most who did get real people only got 1-2 at a time. Those people got ripped off, to be honest… I didn’t get ripped off because I joined the chatrooms…but you can’t expect all players to do their own networking. That could have been completely avoided with a match browser…and I hope that Splash Damage realizes this now.

(The Ranger) #28

Matchmaking , Personal servers , choose match preference options … kinda like Halo Reach where you can choose to play with noisy or quiet players lol

(jazevec) #29

About server browser filters - they tend to be more intricate allowing for more fine-grained customization. A matchmaking system pretends to know better what’s good for you, and it typically leaves only a couple of settings to play with. Patronizing, like many other modern trends in video games.

(tangoliber) #30

The only things I can think of where matchmaking is a better fit than a server browser is

  1. Games that have hundreds of thousands of players a week such as Call of Duty
  2. Casual deathmatch or free for all games
(Apples) #31

Still wondering… Who not implement both of them? Yeah its time consuming and such but both sides have valid arguments, so why do we allways need to frustrate one part of the community? For gameplay choices yes as you cant please everyone and the gameplay must reflect what the studio’s want, but for UI, browser, recording tool and some “social” aspects, just put everything you can and let people use what they prefer would be a logical choice imo.

Peace

(light_sh4v0r) #32

In ETQW they implemented matchmaking in a later patch. Nobody ever used it because it would normally put you on servers with 2 or 3 people which never got active enough to start, but it was there.

(Crytiqal) #33

Ah yea it was this “Hot Server” thingy right?

(light_sh4v0r) #34

Yeah, I think that’s what they called it. Tried it a few times but never bothered again. It would probably work fine if more people used it, but it wasn’t to be.

(tokamak) #35

You can’t implement such thing as an afterthought.

(DarkangelUK) #36

I’d rather have both as on occasion I want to find my friends or know I can find them on a regular server without having to gather them all together 1st… I just know they’ll be on a dedicated server I like to frequent. On the other hand sometimes I just want a quick game, “This is what I want to play, find me 11 other players that want the same and start please” and boom I’m on.

With solely matchmaking you run the risk of low numbers making it impossible to find a game, at least with dedicated servers you can see who’s where and people eventually gather together and fill a server. The problem I have with dedicated servers are idiots that fill them with custom crap or severely stupid settings. A perfect example recently is CS:S, I like to play office every now and again, all the available servers are 64 player and have stupid custom sound packs to download.

Dare I say it… I liked the restrictions that Black Ops dedicated servers had with them, users could still have some custom rules, but all the crap was left out.

Tried to download ET recently and get straight onto a populated server? Forget about it…

(tokamak) #37

Tried to download ET recently and get straight onto a populated server? Forget about it…

It’s an absolute nightmare.

I would buy the old game at a full price if it came with a modern server browser and some quality control regarding customisation.

(Boktor) #38

[QUOTE=tangoliber;389719]The only things I can think of where matchmaking is a better fit than a server browser is

  1. Games that have hundreds of thousands of players a week such as Call of Duty
  2. Casual deathmatch or free for all games[/QUOTE]

I agree with this if we’re talking specifically about multiplayer FPS games on PC.

Let’s see… here are some FPS games I’ve enjoyed over the years, roughly in chronological order: BZFlag, Heavy Gear 2, Tribes 2, Quake 3, ET: Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, CoD: WaW, CoD4, Bad Company 2

I never found myself wishing any of them had matchmaking instead of dedicated servers. I can also safely say I’ve never heard player complaints about the lack of matchmaking.
I admit the 2 mechanisms both have pros and cons, but the concept will never be truly perfected. Still, in my opinion, in FPS team combat games dedicated servers is the way to go.

(Crispy) #39

[QUOTE=jazevec;389585]Essentially just like a filter query? Doesn’t have anything to do with matchmaking ? Look at what you’ve said earlier:

If it automatically creates servers on the fly then of course does have to do with matchmaking and is the opposite of dedicated servers.[/quote]That quote specifically concerns skill-based matchmaking for consoles, for which you generally have a player selected to create and host a new server to fulfil a matchmaking query if needed. Very few console games make use of dedicated servers.

For Brink PC we had a ‘server hijacking’ feature (I think Left 4 Dead PC uses a similar system) which allows a dedicated server to be used for anyone who needs to fulfil a matchmaking query as long as the server is not in use and the owner has permitted it to be hijacked for such a purpose.