Thoughts on CMM

(n-x) #1

I really have a hard time to decide if I like CMM or if I dislike it. On the one hand side, it will be great to be easily able to play together with friends, without needing to change servers and teams the whole time. On the other hand side, I am afraid it will kill competitive even more (if that is even possible).

As far as I understood, please correct me if I am wrong, “quick join” or whatever it will be called, will exclusivly put you in 6on6 matches. If you want to play 7on7 or 8on8 you will have to pick it manually and there will be no CMM.

So, if you want to have balanced games, you either play ranked (5on5, FF on) with long waiting queues and penalties for leaving, or you play CCM (6on6, FF off) with short waiting queues and no penalties for leaving.

In my view, this is going to be an even bigger obstacle for people to try out ranked. Or am I wrong?

(Dr_Plantboss) #2

[center]I don’t think any less people can play ranked. There are probably only 10-30 people in the queue for Ranked at any given time it seems, so…

Yes and No[/center]

(neverplayseriou) #3

“no penalties for leaving.”

cmm will have penalties for leaving.

(Amerika) #4

Here is my view.

The positives of CMM is that people who want a game where there are somewhat equal rating players on both sides will get that. New players will be facing other newer players and older players who are more competitive will get matches against those players. It doesn’t mean the game will get a lot more balanced since balance is kind of an illusion but it will at least mean that games will start out with somewhat equal level players. Also, I think that it will help ranked. Most likely the queuing system they are working on will also be used in ranked which might help matchmaking there. Also, all matches in CMM will be 6v6 only and it will penalize people for leaving early. Smaller matches and a similar system to ranked might mean that ranked gets more traction as the only adjustments at that point would be that you drop to 5v5 and team damage will be on.

Oh, and with CMM you can queue up with friends and always be on their team. Something that has been requested for a long time now.

The downside is that we no longer can bring up a server list and pick a server to play on quickly. At higher MMR’s there might be a longer wait time so good players might be stuck in queue limbo for a while (even happens in OW…love those 5 minute+ queue times). But those are the only two real negatives I can come up with from my point of view.

The server browser is staying in the game and SD said they were keeping some servers. It will also be used for community servers when those are released in the future.

(B_Montiel) #5

Personally, I’m quite against it as it’s a very strong effort they could have put somewhere else in the meantime. There are many ways that will be a certain and long time improvement for this game, which would also bring players in or back in, while CMM will certainly won’t do that. CMM is not an intrinsic quality on its own. If people left claiming it was because they could not play with their friends, I’d chop my hand off there were other reasons behind.

I’ve already did some calculation quite some time ago :
forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/31156/a-few-words-on-casual-matchmaking/p1 *2640 players not 2840 by the way. And again, it’s a rough approximation that certainly do not guarantee balance as the player base is not layered enough.

And for that only reason, I don’t think it’s going to work in any good, reliable and pleasant way. If that CMM system requires everyone to idle for more than 3 minutes no matter you’re playing on peak or low pop hours, then it’s no go for me. And if they force me to use it for pub games, I’ll quit the game, quite literally.

And this has to be said, even when they were 12k people on the game, ranked did not work because it was still not layered enough and you had opportunities to see full cobalts+top tier golds facing silvers and unranked. No matter how hard they could have improved their algorithm, those won’t replace the playerbase requirements those systems need. Even LoL or CS:GO had issues for quite some time before putting a reliable system in place. Considering the time they’ve already spent working on this, considering the high fail potential it has… If I was them, I’d have stopped the waste already.

(Amerika) #6

One of the main issues, which you touched on, is player retention. When new players get into the game they may or may not have max level 5 servers to play on. This early experience can be pretty bad for new players and they never play the game long enough to be able to appreciate it. And even as an FPS newbie you won’t be at level 5 for long and will suddenly get thrown out into the ocean where sharks swim. CMM will help fix that for the lower end while also letting players at the higher end get in some good games with competent players.

So I think that CMM will help this. However, the other point both of us touched on in regards to wait times, is extremely valid. Even games with much larger player-bases can sometimes have long wait time. But since this is casual matchmaking it’s going to be a wider net than what a ranked mode would have. Of course that still won’t help the people at the extreme top end of the spectrum as the will most likely have to wait a while.

Speaking of ranked, it’s hard to compare the potential success of CMM in DB to the ranked systems lack of success since ranked never really had a huge player-base. It had to cast a wide net just to get games in a realistic window of time that people would be willing to wait on (and they raised and lowered the value for getting any match vs. perfect matches constantly). It never had a good incentive to play it back then and it’s not much better now compared to pubbing.

There could definitely be issues. But tons of other games with low player-bases use this same system and it seems to work for them so I have hopes. I just want a way to queue up with friends sometimes on pubs (especially a new friend learning) and a way to challenge a good player while not murdering the game for some new player because they had to face a good player.

(n-x) #7

@Amerika About the system will be used for ranked and pub 6on6. Does this mean your “rank” in pub 6on6 has an influence on your “rank” in ranked? Or do you just mean, that both modes will use the same algorithm, but are completely seperated?

(yesser) #8

i think the CMM would be about xp/min and when going for the first time in ranked that would be used after having a rank (bronze silver gold ect…) you will be playing with some people with the same rank if it take too long queue the max and min rank would changed (example : you are silver 3 you will be playing with silver 2 silver 3 and silver 4 if it take too long it would become silver 1 - to silver 5 ) so that how i think it would be

(B_Montiel) #9

[quote=“Amerika;199300”]One of the main issues, which you touched on, is player retention. When new players get into the game they may or may not have max level 5 servers to play on. This early experience can be pretty bad for new players and they never play the game long enough to be able to appreciate it. And even as an FPS newbie you won’t be at level 5 for long and will suddenly get thrown out into the ocean where sharks swim. CMM will help fix that for the lower end while also letting players at the higher end get in some good games with competent players.

So I think that CMM will help this. However, the other point both of us touched on in regards to wait times, is extremely valid. Even games with much larger player-bases can sometimes have long wait time. But since this is casual matchmaking it’s going to be a wider net than what a ranked mode would have. Of course that still won’t help the people at the extreme top end of the spectrum as the will most likely have to wait a while.

Speaking of ranked, it’s hard to compare the potential success of CMM in DB to the ranked systems lack of success since ranked never really had a huge player-base. It had to cast a wide net just to get games in a realistic window of time that people would be willing to wait on (and they raised and lowered the value for getting any match vs. perfect matches constantly). It never had a good incentive to play it back then and it’s not much better now compared to pubbing.

There could definitely be issues. But tons of other games with low player-bases use this same system and it seems to work for them so I have hopes. I just want a way to queue up with friends sometimes on pubs (especially a new friend learning) and a way to challenge a good player while not murdering the game for some new player because they had to face a good player.[/quote]

I’m actually interested to know those games. But anyway, my post was just my bad sided frenchman opinion. You know, I/we always see the bad parts before the good ones. I do hope it’s going to work.

The ranked comparison somehow hold as it’s their closest work which share most of the similarities. And there is legitimate reasons to worry. Ranked was there nearly right after the open beta launch, with pretty much twice more people on the game, and many people willing to play it. It did not go well for various reasons, but it worked definitely better than it does now. And balance was already an issue, as the game grouped people with huge skill gaps at that time when it was not really necessary.

Actually, the balance issues would have been solved from scratch if they had implemented community servers since steam launch… Vets and good players would have stopped directly from ghosting and crushing “official” pub servers in 2 weeks. I have good example of games where quick join sent you to official servers and avoiding community ones. Team fortress 2 just to name one. And I rarely saw people complaining about balance and skill gaps. Mostly because newcomers never joined a server full of comp-sided players. And the skill gap is quite comparable as here (between 2007 and 2010 at least)…

(aminuseternal) #10

but is that not what min lvl. 10 and 20 servers are for? I mean sure, min lvl 10 is salt mine valley, but those are supposed to be for vets are they not? However, the problem with those, of course, is that there are not a lot of them. The problem that I see often happens is that people get put in a min lvl 10 or 20 servers and do not want to wait for a game, or do not want to have to deal with 1v2 or 3v4 or bother waiting for other players to show up and end up leaving to find a more populated server. So CMM might actually help with this issue, It seems like it is much easier to wait at a menu and just do something else in the meantime rather than hoping the game will put you in a decent match, or waiting for a lobby to fill up, but that might just be my preference.

(Szakalot) #11

@aminuseternal many good players go on normal servers for easy stomps of lvl1-10. some others even start smurfing to abuse the system even more.

then you have homest players who want an 8v8 experience : but cant since minlvl servers are 6v6 only.

atm there is no spot for med+/high skill players to gather, and trying to start up a random minlvl20 server is far too inconsistent.

community servers run by clans/event organizers would be much easier to fillup with good players, and give them something to fight for, rather then the easy stomping, even on minlvl10

(Amerika) #12

Yup. I always look for min level 10/20 but if they aren’t up I just go to a normal server and hope for the best. I’m not going to spend up to 20-30 minutes for a match to end and cross my fingers hoping somebody leaves. I don’t like waiting or wasting time when I have only X amount of time to play in a day. That’s another reason why I’m all for CMM.

One small game that I recently played with CMM is Paladins. It worked pretty well and we got matches pretty quickly with the longest wait being maybe 2 minutes. I’m OK with that.

(B_Montiel) #13

but is that not what min lvl. 10 and 20 servers are for? I mean sure, min lvl 10 is salt mine valley, but those are supposed to be for vets are they not? However, the problem with those, of course, is that there are not a lot of them. The problem that I see often happens is that people get put in a min lvl 10 or 20 servers and do not want to wait for a game, or do not want to have to deal with 1v2 or 3v4 or bother waiting for other players to show up and end up leaving to find a more populated server. So CMM might actually help with this issue, It seems like it is much easier to wait at a menu and just do something else in the meantime rather than hoping the game will put you in a decent match, or waiting for a lobby to fill up, but that might just be my preference.
[/quote]

Honestly, stomps and imbalance do occur on those servers as well. There’s a lot of players who are literal potatoes and way above level 20 nowadays. Those servers worked as a work around solution for quite some time but they totally lost their usage now. And by the way, it was pretty much advertised as such when min level 10 appeared 2 weeks after they released the game open on steam.

Of course, stomps have good chances to be less blatant, but as long as they don’t cut comp/vet/experienced/obj (choose the word which fit your personal definition) oriented guys from casual/potatoe/quickjoinmasher/codkiddo/uselesssniperinthebackyard, balance issues are bound to happen. Even on CMM in my opinion. And I don’t mean a cut with an unbreakable wall, I mean a cut through community servers, which implicitly cut ties between those profiles with a permeable frontier.

(aminuseternal) #14

@Szakalot ah okay that makes more sense ^^ But yeah, outside of peak hours and stopwatch, you cannot really find min lvl 20 servers :frowning:

@B.montiel You are definitely right, the last time I was in a min lvl 20 server, I think we had maybe one or two people who were lvl 20. Everyone else was 40-60. Thanks for explaining more about community servers my potato brain just wasn’t really understanding >_> I think that is probably the only way to separate comp focused people and casual people. Maybe then we could get 5v5 servers with at least the option to turn friendly fire on(though that is another topic entirely) but Its strange because SD made this competitive game based around 5v5 and they do not seem to want to do that outside of comp.

(LifeupOmega) #15

Maybe I’ll be able to find good players and not the crutch-infested shitshows that are every pub in this game regardless of level barrier.

Maybe we’ll see ranked actually get used again after this.

Maybe we’ll get FF on and class limits too.

Maybe, instead, we can get community servers.

Also a huge issue now that 6v6 has fucked off from regular servers. Sure love waiting for ages for a chance at a spot or trying to fill up a server where everyone leaves as they join. So fun.

(TheStrangerous) #16

In theory, yes it is good for separating players with huge skill difference.
However, DB’s population count is too low, and finding other players will take too long.

(Tanker_Ray) #17

[quote=“TheStrangerous;199403”]In theory, yes it is good for separating players with huge skill difference.
However, DB’s population count is too low, and finding other players will take too long.[/quote]

Right. I just hope they advertise a bit more, though I know it costs a hell.

Well I don’t know which server you are playing in, but besides AUS or Asia(my home server), I think other servers will be fine.

(TheStrangerous) #18

[quote=“THUNDA;199408”][quote=“TheStrangerous;199403”]In theory, yes it is good for separating players with huge skill difference.
However, DB’s population count is too low, and finding other players will take too long.[/quote]

Right. I just hope they advertise a bit more, though I know it costs a hell.

Well I don’t know which server you are playing in, but besides AUS or Asia(my home server), I think other servers will be fine.[/quote]

You’d think that European like me wouldn’t have any problems with CMM, unfortunately it takes dozen of minutes to find someone. Some reported to have waited half an hour.

(Szakalot) #19

[quote=“TheStrangerous;199403”]In theory, yes it is good for separating players with huge skill difference.
However, DB’s population count is too low, and finding other players will take too long.[/quote]

I’m not sure how that thinking works.

If waiting times are too long, wouldn’t that mean its difficult to find a server already at this point?

Surely the fact that its always easy to find a server, at least on EU; and even in the minlvl10 group, demonstrates the waiting times will be fine (under a few min).

Server browser will remain open when CMM is online. If people decide to ignore CMM altogether, SD will drop the idea.

Its definitely worth a try, considering the insane increase in individual game quality (even unbalanced games are not quite the same as ‘unbalanced because my entire team is lvl1-3 and clueless potatoes’)

(bontsa) #20

Besides for all I know CMM wont be as strict in terms of skill gap as Ranked matchmaker. It simply cannot, exactly for the reason stated here: otherwise massive que times. And imagine this: now theres literally a handful of players only playing ranked and even those at very specific times. Almost the entire DB population now would be funneled to CMM whenever the feature gets released, as most will give it a try even if they’re more of a server browser- type fellas.