The formula has already been written.

(pulley) #41

+1 for Valdez

(Protekt1) #42

There should be a way to separate very skilled players from those who are more casual and just want to mess around. But an ELO system would not work in this game. ELO is pretty binary. You either win or you lose. It works really well in 1v1 games or games where its 1 set team versus another set team because you rise or fall as a single player or as a team. I don’t know how it works in LoL. But in SC2 you are either always alone or if with a team your team’s rating is exclusive for that team.

In FPS games the ELO system doesn’t work as well. Especially in a game where there is drop in game play. It can be frustrating perhaps say you join a match late and your team seems like it will inevitably lose. You will lose ELO rating despite having little to do with the loss. This can become very frustrating and ultimately make players rage at teammates or the situation etc because many will care about that ELO loss. I remember Halo2/3/etc have a ranking system, all numbers behind the scene, but there is no drop in gameplay. If a player leaves the match, that player is not replaced. The benefit is that set teams just works better with a ranking system. But most FPS games choose to have drop in players rather than have matches complete with unbalanced teams due to excessive amount of early quitters.

What DB could use is a ranking system that is not determined by simply whether you win or lose. One game I can think of is shootmania. You basically gain LP (not sure what is stands for) based on how well you perform against your opponents and what ranking they have. I am not entirely sure how this works but essentially it works out that every match you gain points but you will gain very little if you do poorly. You will gain a lot more if you do well against higher ranked opponents. And rank is displayed under the name.

Now these are just suggestions for pub/casual play. If there will be a hard coded competitive mode, these suggestions don’t apply. If there is a competitive mode I suggest something like sc2 where you form a team and that team gains ELO.

(BTMPL) #43

What DB could use is a ranking system that is not determined by simply whether you win or lose. One game I can think of is shootmania. You basically gain LP (not sure what is stands for) based on how well you perform against your opponents and what ranking they have. I am not entirely sure how this works but essentially it works out that every match you gain points but you will gain very little if you do poorly. You will gain a lot more if you do well against higher ranked opponents. And rank is displayed under the name.
You know that this is the basic of ELO? In ELO you get more point if there is a bigger skill gap between you and the opponent (where the opponent is higher skill) and loose more when you lost to a less killed player.

(Protekt1) #44

I think you’re missing vital parts that I talked about that in my post and even in that quoted section. In that quoted area I am talking about performance based gains and in ELO there is no performance component. There is simply the question of whether you won or lost. And in shootmania there is no loss of LP, afaik, you only gain LP and your ranking is based off how much LP you have accrued. Its a completely different system. And in the paragraphs above I spoke to as to why I think ELO is an inappropriate system for ranking in a fps like this one.

(Breo) #45

[QUOTE=Protekt1;438512]There should be a way to separate very skilled players from those who are more casual and just want to mess around. But an ELO system would not work in this game. ELO is pretty binary. You either win or you lose. It works really well in 1v1 games or games where its 1 set team versus another set team because you rise or fall as a single player or as a team. I don’t know how it works in LoL. But in SC2 you are either always alone or if with a team your team’s rating is exclusive for that team.

In FPS games the ELO system doesn’t work as well. Especially in a game where there is drop in game play. It can be frustrating perhaps say you join a match late and your team seems like it will inevitably lose. You will lose ELO rating despite having little to do with the loss. This can become very frustrating and ultimately make players rage at teammates or the situation etc because many will care about that ELO loss. I remember Halo2/3/etc have a ranking system, all numbers behind the scene, but there is no drop in gameplay. If a player leaves the match, that player is not replaced. The benefit is that set teams just works better with a ranking system. But most FPS games choose to have drop in players rather than have matches complete with unbalanced teams due to excessive amount of early quitters.

What DB could use is a ranking system that is not determined by simply whether you win or lose. One game I can think of is shootmania. You basically gain LP (not sure what is stands for) based on how well you perform against your opponents and what ranking they have. I am not entirely sure how this works but essentially it works out that every match you gain points but you will gain very little if you do poorly. You will gain a lot more if you do well against higher ranked opponents. And rank is displayed under the name.

Now these are just suggestions for pub/casual play. If there will be a hard coded competitive mode, these suggestions don’t apply. If there is a competitive mode I suggest something like sc2 where you form a team and that team gains ELO.[/QUOTE]

+1
Exactly the ELO system isn’t made for MP video games. I read an article about the TrueSkill ranking system from Xbox that algoritm is made for games. Would be cool if DB use something similar for the matchmaking system.

http://www.bungie.net/en-US/Forum/Post?id=602553

(RasteRayzeR) #46

ELO is basically why I quit playing LoL … worst community a game can ever get.

Anyway, not to always highlight the same thread (especially that I started it :)), but skillshots and rewards could be a part of this ranking system.

link : http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/35367-XP-unlockable-achievements-Humor-required-xD

(tokamak) #47

[QUOTE=Breo;438600]+1
Exactly the ELO system isn’t made for MP video games. I read an article about the TrueSkill ranking system from Xbox that algoritm is made for games. Would be cool if DB use something similar for the matchmaking system.

http://www.bungie.net/en-US/Forum/Post?id=602553[/QUOTE]

Trueskill only expands on ELO and corrects for the lower share one player has multiplayer matches. That´s a good thing but when someone talks about ELO then it´s fair to assume that we´re talking about a system that also accounts for this.

(Breo) #48

That’s not even true what you said.

TrueSkill is based in W/L (K/D doesn’t matter) while ELO is based on K/D? So TS fits a objective class based shooter better where teamplay is also important, instead of only fragging (e.g. ELO would fit in a low player count DM mode).

The ELO ratings system won’t work for DB because when you check the the kill obituary you see that you get crossfire killed a lot. So when a player with a low rating kills a player with a high rating with 1hp will reward the low rating player? Also if you choose to play objects you probably die a lot more it means you will match up with newbies even when you play a lot of hours (more experience with the game).

The TrueSkill rating system rate players based on the consistancy (Sigma) of your past performance (Mu) and depends if you win/lose the rating will increase/decrease. The rating of all the players of the teams are put together, when the team with the overall lower rating wins (beating a team with a higher rating) they will rewarded more. How much each player receives depends on the individual ratings.

(tokamak) #49

Yes, mean and standard deviation are necessary for the regression analysis to make Trueskill work.

ELO is for 1v1 (or teams with a permanent composition) and Trueskill is for Team vs Team where the teams constantly vary. That’s the only difference. Trueskill is ELO with a statistical correction for the covariabele caused by being part of different teams.

I won’t go further into this because that’s going to bore everyone to tears. I’m sure SD has enough folks walking around that understand this system.

(Protekt1) #50

[QUOTE=tokamak;438630]Yes, mean and standard deviation are necessary for the regression analysis to make Trueskill work.

ELO is for 1v1 (or teams with a permanent composition) and Trueskill is for Team vs Team where the teams constantly vary. That’s the only difference. Trueskill is ELO with a statistical correction for the covariabele caused by being part of different teams.

I won’t go further into this because that’s going to bore everyone to tears. I’m sure SD has enough folks walking around that understand this system.[/QUOTE]

I don’t know trueskill but as you describe it it seems to predict your chances of winning based on your rating, your teammates ratings, and enemy teams rating. If you win a match the system calculates you’re more than likely (50%+ chance) to lose, you will rise in rating. The more likely to lose, the higher an increase.

My problem with that system is that it is still a binary win or loss. I’d prefer to see a ranking system that can account for performing well as well as win/loss. And by this I mean to say I’d like to see that in pub/casual play. In set teams, ie sc2, I’d prefer to see straight up ELO. But it would have to be set teams with perhaps 1-2 subs. I don’t know if it would be acceptable to change up your roster or not. I think probably.

(Bloodbite) #51

No, but I think the longevity of W:ET ultimately trumps RTCW. Whether it was purely because it was a free version of RTCW-lite, or it happened to be a contributing factor to a better balanced version of multiplayer… a matter of perspective it seems. But if it were a competition of numbers and community commitment in both the pug and pro world, W:ET was the undisputed winner.

(dommafia) #52

This is all I could think about during this whole thread.

(Kendle) #53

Of those 2, the former by an order of magnitude, but there’s a 3rd factor to add to the mix, community content.

ETPro IMO saved ET initially, both by making comp possible and the bug fixes that Bani added that SD then worked back into ETMain, plus the very many community maps, including many good comp maps, and the later pub mods that came along.

As someone who played both, and I suspect in the opinion of almost everyone who played both, ET was nowhere near as balanced as RTCW. It varied from being much worse (on release) to almost as good (after ETPro had addressed most of the issues), but for out of the box inherent balance RTCW easily trumps ET.

RTCW just couldn’t compete, 2 years into it’s life, with what was effectively a free version of the game, and one which the community was forced to make new content for almost immediately because the maps that SD made were so bad.

(pulley) #54

You are right Kendle! COD 1 was released at the same time as W:ET and i remember many mates switched to COD, including me and my former rtcw team. The hole game just didnt feel right and it couldnt compare with RtCW. I remember the movement and the shooting feeling soooooo extremely slow XD

(Valdez) #55

[QUOTE=Kendle;438657]Of those 2, the former by an order of magnitude, but there’s a 3rd factor to add to the mix, community content.

ETPro IMO saved ET initially, both by making comp possible and the bug fixes that Bani added that SD then worked back into ETMain, plus the very many community maps, including many good comp maps, and the later pub mods that came along.

As someone who played both, and I suspect in the opinion of almost everyone who played both, ET was nowhere near as balanced as RTCW. It varied from being much worse (on release) to almost as good (after ETPro had addressed most of the issues), but for out of the box inherent balance RTCW easily trumps ET.

RTCW just couldn’t compete, 2 years into it’s life, with what was effectively a free version of the game, and one which the community was forced to make new content for almost immediately because the maps that SD made were so bad.[/QUOTE]

The truth has been spoken.

(INF3RN0) #56

Why does everything here have to revolve around which one of the older games was best??? It accomplishes absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t doubt that RTCW was well balanced because it was straight up simpler. This doesn’t mean that the more complex sequels didn’t have just as many successes as they did faults. Also a ton of variables become mixed in with the “bad stuff” simply because they did things differently. This just exposes the bias of people’s judgement towards progress because it’s new or different. We can just waste away with players from every ET game +1ing every thread or post that just praises their game, until SD decides our feedback is overall useless.

This alpha test just feels like it becomes less and less productive by the week. We all share the basic structure in common and we all want that much, but why does being open to anything beyond that earn you the title of “fan boy” or “pub noob”. In my opinion we need to focus more on helping develop SD’s ideas into workable and balanced features instead of just taking the easy route of “my game was better”. We can’t expect it to turn out exactly the way we want in every aspect, which is why “constructive criticism” is the only way were going to contribute anything real. So let’s first help get DB to be a true sequel to the old games at its core, and then allow it to become its own game. I’d rather end up with a game that I might not like as much, but is at least balanced and functional.

(iwound) #57

do you like to troll instead of giving back.try giving some feedback or bug reports instead of waving your rtcw flag around with you all the time cos its getting damn annoying.

(pulley) #58

Because SD just doesn’t learn. They are making the same mistakes over and over again.

We are trying to help, the same way as you do inferno… the only difference is that we have our eyes open XD

For example why do they have to make those maps so extremely big? It doesn’t make any sense for me. White Chapel would be fine if it would end after the EV elevator. No need for the last struggling stage! Or building a second Wall to Waterloo! wtf!

(Valdez) #59

Well Inferno this is exactly what we are trying to assist SD with.

(Kendle) #60

Completely agree with you, but we’re no-where near that core yet, and in fact seem to be moving away from it anyway.

For me “core” means no health regen and no ammo racks for a start. Let all the resources a team needs be provided by a member of the team. This is a fundamental principle upon which team-work is built. At the moment in DB you don’t need Medics because your health regenerates, and you don’t need F/Ops because you can get ammo from racks.

Building from a core only works if you start with that core, but we haven’t. This thread isn’t about which earlier game was “best”, it’s about realising there’s a fundamental core formula already available, and starting with that might’ve been a more sensible thing to do in the first place.

What SD have done is fit oval wheels to a car and asked us to give feedback on the complex suspension system they’ve come up with to ensure a smooth ride. I can’t do that without pointing out round wheels would’ve been a better bet to begin with.

I agree with that as well, but for me it’s about where this game is going, and IMO it’s going down the route of overly complex and totally geared towards pub play. I can understand that, and can see how it’s entirely the right thing for SD to do commercially. The trouble is I don’t think I can help them get there because it’s just fundamentally not the game I want to play.

Maybe I need to take some time out, go and do something else for a while and see if anything’s changed a few patches from now.