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Poll: Broken Matchmaking

Discussion in 'Game Discussion' started by GGodHand, 19 Jul 2017.

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Does matchmaking need a balance revamp?

  1. YES

    75 vote(s)
    70.8%
  2. NO

    31 vote(s)
    29.2%
  1. GGodHand

    GGodHand Member

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    I agree with you. That issue is still present even at Ace 2 and Ace 1. I'm sure it'll be the same story when I reach Nightmare.
     
    Last edited: 21 Jul 2017
  2. GGodHand

    GGodHand Member

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    This is exactly what I've been proposing. Seems to work with other multiplayer games. Infamy, ship tier, weapons, gear, total dmg, etc should all be considered into the algorithm. World of Warships has excellent matchmaking compared to BB, proof it can be done differently. I'm not buying the excuse that it can only be done one way.
     
  3. Miathan

    Miathan Well-Known Member

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    I'm not. I'm against that change because it's not an improvement. Putting equal mk levels on both sides does not make anything more fair.
     
    Kitterini likes this.
  4. Kitterini

    Kitterini Well-Known Member

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    For this to be a real argument we would need to agree on whether its an improvement or not.
    I think matchmaking works ok, being a compromise between short queue and almost all matches being winable.

    I'm all for improvements, but I do hope they focus on improving larger concerns than mk4 vs mk5 boats. The most fun would be larger fleets, but that also comes at the expense of queuetime (but at least you can then decide if you are willing to wait or not).
     
  5. Cpt Obvious

    Cpt Obvious Well-Known Member

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    I think it's fine as it is. Sometimes it feels scary to meet an all out mk5 team with only mk4s, but they are still winnable - those guys are low infamy for a reason.
    I find incompatible load outs / builds or strategies to be a bigger loss-factor than uneven level of ships.
    And, over the course of many matches things even out, sometimes you're slightly ahead, sometimes you're behind (goes for other problems like floaters as well).
     
  6. Miika

    Miika Game Lead

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    Have you looked into how World of Warships does their matchmaking? It is purely based on the ships [http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Battle_Mechanics_(WoWS)] and does not have a concept of infamy or player skill. What this means is that the battles might seem equal and fair on paper, but in practice good players dominate the matches and it's entirely possible that the other team is made out of 30% winratio beginners while the other team is full of 80% winratio pros. This means there are no guarantees and the matchmaker is not even trying to create matches which have 50-50% winning chances. It only makes sure people are playing with equal gear.

    So why is Battle Bay not using this approach? Two reasons mainly:
    1. Battle Bay has a much more complex and deep progression game. While it's pretty straight forward to create matchmaking buckets based on 10 tiers of ships, Battle Bay has ships, items, crew and perks to consider. There is no single easy linear progression scale which to use as a matchmaking bucket. This means we would need to decide how to value all the progression parameters relative to each others, and it would be inherently unstable and unfair system as it would be an end result of our subjective opinions.
    2. The MMR based approach in Battle Bay is more casual. It means even the worst players can still play the game with ~50% winning chance, they just play on the lower tier battles. With gear based matchmaking they would be just losing, and losing, and losing, until they quit. Making the next worst players to start losing more, until they lose and lose and quit etc.

    How about a combination then? Well, they doesn't really work together. As soon as you start mixing some other variables into the mix, the MMR (infamy) loses its meaning and it breaks down.

    However, what we could do and have considered is to do basically a cosmetic-only team shuffles based on other variables. In that model the matchmaking would still be based purely on infamy but after we have a group of people who are interchangeable when measured by infamy, we would use some other parameters as a secondary sorting key. This would not make the matches any more fair, actually they would become slightly less fair, but it might make battles that seem more fair in the eye of the players.
     
  7. Joey who

    Joey who Well-Known Member

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    I would love this personally. It wouldn't be perfect but anythings better than the 50% W/L system
     
  8. Miika

    Miika Game Lead

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    It would still be exactly the same "50% W/L system".
     
    Miathan likes this.
  9. Joey who

    Joey who Well-Known Member

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    Well shit... Nevermind then lol
     
  10. Miika

    Miika Game Lead

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    Just out of curiously, if you don't like the teams having equal chances of winning, what would you prefer then?
     
    CrizR, behumble, Kalbs and 1 other person like this.
  11. GGodHand

    GGodHand Member

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    Thanks for replying. Yes, I know how WoWS matchmaking works considering I used to play it quite often. I appreciate your input, however, the quoted sentence alone tells me you've probably never played WoWS before. I get your point, but I cannot agree with you considering your lack of experience with WoWS. Googling the wiki's matchmaking does not tell you that WoWS has captain skills which literally operate and upgrade the same way BB's crew talents work. The matchmaking wiki will also not inform you of other factors that are comparable to BB's, which you would have known had you played it. WoWS also has weapon and ship parts to upgrade, comparable to an extent to BB's weapons and gears. It has leagues which is similar to infamy leagues in BB. It also has a paint job system that is not only cosmetic, but actually give slight changes in stats, hey kind of like perks in BB. It has a flag system which works similar to paintjobs that effects both performace and rewards, another similarity of perks from BB again! There have been restriction patches in WoWS over time which they admitted were broken and fixed through a patch regarding uneven amount of carriers, similar to the complaints you keep getting in BB about uneven amount of fixers per team. The matchmaking in WoWS is much more complicated than simply ship tier. It calculates all the ship performance factors which are found at the bottom of the wiki (survivability, artillery, AA, maneuverability, concealment, torpedoes, aircraft). Considering all that goes into the algorithm makes its matchmaking system much more superior compared to BB's, and that's not even counting the restrictions they added over time, like the carrier/fixer example I told you about. WoWS matchmaking truly let's a player's skill shine freely. With all that said, I just feel like you guys might be stuck and fixated on a particular system of matchmaking. I hope you guys at the very least consider restriction patches like WoWS did with their game over time. I enjoy BB alot, but I can't help imagine how much more I would enjoy it if its matchmaking can be improved. I highly recommend your staff play WoWS because I think you guys could learn a lot from it, and potentially even decide to use elements that work and perhaps transfer them in some form into BB. At the end of the day, World of Warships is an eSport game and Battle Bay is not. The day BB gets on the level of WoWS on the eSport stage might be the day your matchmaking decisons may have more weight to them.
     
  12. Joey who

    Joey who Well-Known Member

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    I don't mind losing but when I lose I prefer it to be against harder enemies rather than with handicapped teammates. I don't want to be last player at 4:00 left to game so maybe less infamy rewards for lower performers but still 50% wins for them.

    I lose but perform well: Maybe I could lose 2 or 3 less infamy than the others. If I noticeably carry a team maybe I could win 2 or 3 extra infamy. And vice versa. Not much but it would add up of I keep performing well. Then lower my infamy rewards once I reach the infamy level I can't perform well in until I improve or get better items.
     
  13. Miika

    Miika Game Lead

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    That is true, I'm not that familiar with World of Warships. However, I do have >5500 battles in World of Tanks Blitz and I'm quite familiar how Wargaming approaches matchmaking. Their approach is purely gear based without any MMR. They are two different approaches and lead into totally different dynamics. Battle Bay has chosen the MMR based approach used by pretty much all other competitive games.

    The problem with that approach is how to measure contribution fully 100% accurately and objectively. Since that is impossible, infamy would not be fair for all players anymore, and some players would be ranked higher just because they happen to play differently, not because they cause their their teams to win more. Would you like the world top to be only frost users for example, just because the game overvalues frost contribution just by 0.1%?

    To illustrate, if we look at the current world number 1. and 2. you can see their difference is only 6 infamy points and they have played 30000 battles. This mean even 0.0002 infamy point per battle bias would already cause them to switch places. And calculating contribution that accurately and fairly is just not possible.
     
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  14. Joey who

    Joey who Well-Known Member

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    Hmm that's true. Matchmaking is very tricky lol. I can see why it seems so out of our favors.
     
  15. Kitterini

    Kitterini Well-Known Member

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    My one suggestion for better matchmaking would be to get rid of the nightmare reset to 4000 --- If anything creates inbalance its monsters like Christmas & S fleeting when they are both around 4k infamy each. I got lucky at the start of last season and ended up on their team 7 times in a row for essentially 7 free wins, was nice but also a tad silly!
    But I suppose the system remains because you want to keep a mechanism in that removes infamy from the total pool?
     
  16. Totoro

    Totoro Active Member

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    My only balancing issue, and perhaps unsolvable because of the small number of players above 3k, is the infamy disparity you face in some matches between players; sometimes it can be 1k or more just between player 1 and 2. When you get the short end of that stick multiple times in a row, it removes quite a bit of the fun. I have no issue with how infamy accumulates or basing matchmaking on it. But I wish MM could operate within a tighter band or prevent repetitive queues with that kind of disparity. Do I really need to be fodder for the same infamy goliaths over and over again? Those beatdowns are pointless.
     
    Last edited: 21 Jul 2017
    monobrow likes this.
  17. Miika

    Miika Game Lead

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    We would definitely like this too but unfortunately like you said on the top end there are so much less people that waiting times would explode from tighter brackets. We have tried it once in a while, and always had to revert. There have been people queuing more than 1 hour sometimes when we have narrowed the brackets even a little bit...
     
  18. NAN0NAT3R

    NAN0NAT3R Member

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    I also played world of tanks for some years and can say their matchmaking is horrible. In battle bay when you are going against ships with higher mk you can at least hit them and damage them. In wot, if you go against a tank one tier above you, it is almost impossible to do damage to it. That is completely unfair since they can 2-3 shot your tank while you can shoot them 10 times and only one shot penetrated. This is not a problem in battle bay, I like this matchmaking because going against those higher mk ships makes me think that they can easily be beaten with good teamwork. All you need to get higher in infamy is just to keep playing and have your team in consideration in your play style. This is why I don't think the matchmaking is broken, you can progress you just need to spend time in the game.
     
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  19. Totoro

    Totoro Active Member

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    I love WOT just because of the gameplay. But agreed on MM. That game is a pay for win rate system where you can buy better perks and ammo to improve win performance. NO THANKS!

    If we ever get some form of organized guild war system in the game, perhaps this can allow for another outlet to progress a guild's battle performance based on teamwork, boats/items/captains (aka money and time), and skill. Winrate is more suitable for that guild-based scenario. Just a little issue of a larger player base and coding...hehe.
     
    Last edited: 21 Jul 2017
  20. NAN0NAT3R

    NAN0NAT3R Member

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    I loved the game too, spent two years playing it and had several tier 9 tanks and was so close to the e-100 but I quit because of matchmaking and because it was pay to win with its premium ammo.
     

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