The Case For How Matchmaking Is Worse Than TF1

Discussion in 'Titanfall 2 News & Discussion' started by ensc, Dec 3, 2016.

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  1. ensc

    ensc Generation 7
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    #21 ensc, Jan 21, 2017
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2017
    Ahh, this is the argument that is always used to prevent this from being done right. The poor old teams/groups/clans would get penalized by having to wait longer. There are so many things wrong with this argument.

    1) The health and longevity of the game should always reign supreme and the most imporant piece of this is to keep the user base as large as possible.
    2) In order to do this, the most important thing you can do is to give brand new players as much of a fighting chance as possible.
    3) In order to do this, without having a good matchmaking system in place, which they don't, you have to favor the independant players and yes, actually discourage the teams/groups/clans. Notice, I am not saying eliminate them, but discourage them by putting them in a que until their is a suitable number of players at relatively the same skill level on the other side (does not have to be another team/group/clan on the other side, but just an assembly of the same number of players with similar skill level). Now, this only discourages them if there are not enough players of similar skill available. Right now, when the user base is larger, this will probably not be a problem. If the user base gets lower, then yes they may have to end up waiting longer.
    4) They are only being "penalized" (as you say, I would say discouraged) if they choose to be stubborn, but that is their choice. If they don't want to wait, they have many choices:
    a) Stay together and try the same mode on a different server.
    b) Stay together and try a different mode on the same server.
    c) Break apart and play the same mode on the same server.
    5) However, if you do not have a good matchmaking system and allow teams/groups/clans to sit on one side with all new players on other side, you are going to drive newer players away before they even get started and kill your user base.

    I actually did the math on this in one of the threads here to show why it hurts the game to favor teams/groups/clans over individual players. I will see if I can recreate it here. Let's say you have one group of Gen 10s that just sits there in a lobby all the time and they keep getting paired up with random newer players on the other side and they steamroll them. And let's say that 1 team plays a little Attrition and a little Hardpoint each night. I would say that on average they probably steamrolled and discouraged at least 2 brand new players in Attrition and 2 brand new players in Hardpoint from ever playing the game again every single day. So that's 4 players/day that they are driving away. Let's use TF1's lifespan now. It has been out 2 years and 9 months, so lets say 1000 days. So this one group of Gen 10s could have potentially driven away 4000 new players. Can you imagine how much healthier the TF1 user base would be right now if that team had not been allowed to do that? (sarcastic)Oh, but, "No, let's favor the teams/groups/clans, because we would not want for them to leave the game." Screw that! I would much rather have those 4000 players they drove away than the 5 or 6 stubborn idiots who drove them away. And this example only accounted for one group doing this, when there were multiple that did this.

    The best solution is to have a good matchmaking algorithm that looks at each individuals Generation/Skill/Effectiveness individually (whether they are in a group or not) and create matches by putting players of equal number and skill on the other side. This would even work with teams/groups/clans as you can see in the third example here, where Team 1 had a group of 5 Gen 10s:
    upload_2017-1-21_0-27-41.png
    Notice how there are Gen 1s (brand new players in each of these), but it is all balanced out, because both sides have equal number of players and equal skill levels. I'm only using Generation for sake of example, but I would recommend the algorithm would look deeper at skill and effectiveness as well, but the principle would work the same.

    I do have to address your comment about the teams of players in TF1 being penalized and having to wait longer. I'm sorry, but that was just their own stubbornness. I know, because my original group of TF1 friends did this and that is why I said good riddance to them. The user base was so darn low and yet they would insist on sitting there in a block of 5 or 6 Gen 10s and then have to wait forever to get a game. It wasn't because it could not find a match for them, because TF1 did not even have a matchmaking algorithm at all. It was blatantly obvious. Here is why that was rediculous, even more so in TF1 than TF2. In TF2, it tries to wait to have a full game and almost never starts until you have full teams on both sides. However, in TF1, it would start a new game if you had just 4 total players with 2 on each side. So think about how foolish these blocks of 5 or 6 Gen 10s were.
    1) If they all split up, they could get in a 3 on 2 OR 3 on 3 game amongst each other immediately. But NOOOOOO!!!! They'd rather sit their like stubborn fools and then wonder why they don't have a game and complain about it.
    2) If they split up like that and played each other, it would be a much more challenging and satisfying game than what usually happened, which was those 5 or 6 Gen 10s against maybe 3 random Gen 1s. That was foolish on so many levels, because:
    a) How is that even fun unless you are just a bully by nature?
    b) By doing this you are driving potential new players away and killing your user base and, "Gee, I wonder why you can never get a game?"

    I mean, I had about enough of that crap after about a week of it and said good riddance to those friends and every now and then I would run across them doing the same damn thing even 1 or 2 years down the road when the user base was even smaller, probably largely because of them driving everyone away. How freaking boring and self defeating.
     
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  2. rainman0211

    rainman0211 Generation 7
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  3. ensc

    ensc Generation 7
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  4. Derrame

    Derrame Generation 6

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    I don't like to play against fps clans, it's just impossible to defeat them, they are like robots,
    it doesn't matter what you do, you're dead
    they should have their own server/data center/network system/fronteer
    normal individual players, imporvising can never beat an organized team
    i encounter fps clans often, and most of the time i just quit the match, i seach again, because it's boring, you make a step out of the spawning point and black white flash, boom you're dead, a faster than light robot just killed you without you even noticing it, repeat over and over again until defeat
     
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  5. Ik0n88x

    Ik0n88x Generation 7
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    How often are you coming up against full teams? I think I've came across maybe 2 or 3 times when I was VSing an entire enemy team wearing the same tag in 5 Generations. The most likely scenario is I run into 2 players running the same tag.
     
  6. ensc

    ensc Generation 7
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    I agree with you Derrame. I think your solution of them having their own server is a good one. Short of that, this is why you need to have a good matchmaking algorithm that would set them in a que, analyze each member of the clans skill level, and add players (individuals or groups) that match their skill level to the other side and then, and only then, start the game. That method is almost like creating an artificial clan server inside of the general community, because yes, they can be there, but they are not going to get a game until they can be matched with players of equal skill.

    Personally, in the general population, I think it is disrespectful to play coordinated, because it goes against the nature of the game. In both TF1 and TF2, the nature of the game is that there are going to be strangers there, so strangers against strangers. So if one team is strangers and Respawn allows the other team to be an FPS clan that has been playing coordinated for the last 5 years, that is rediculous. That is like putting up an NFL team against a pee wee team that only just met each other and aren't even talking. If you even consider allowing that to happen, then you need go back to Game Design 101, because allowing that to happen is the surest way to kill your user base before it even gets started and in turn kill your game.

    So, it has to be either their own server or a matchmaking algorithm with que that puts them up against players of equal skill.

    I can give you a good example. I was truly one of the best Hardpoint Domination players in the world in TF1. And, I knew who all of the other best Hardpoint Domination players were in TF1 and I would consider Rowdemis to be the absolute best of the best. We never played together in TF1 and Rowdemis was always my stiffest competition. Well, we played together in TF2, so now you have probably the 2 best Hardpoint Domination players from TF1 on one team along with some of the other players who ran with Rowdemis in TF1 on our team as well who were also pretty decent, especially when playing with Rowdemis. However, none of us played coordinated, we were all just strong independant players. Well, I was the MVP of the team Rowdemis was on, but we lost to some members of the [tfg] clan who always play in full teams and play coordinated and you can tell they've been playing that way for years. Here is a screenshot of that game (just blacked my name out, because I like to keep game and forum seperate):
    upload_2017-1-22_13-52-33.png

    They weren't the same group, but you can see at least one of them here, so you know it was the same clan. Their scores don't look good here, because I saw it was them, just took a screenshot and quit.
    upload_2017-1-22_13-55-25.png

    The other thing you can't see here is that Rowdemis is not just good at the objectives, but usually gets close to 20 kills on top of it, so to get only 6 while they have 5 players getting 10, 15, 16, 9 and 12 should tell you something.

    Just to show you what I'm talking about here is another game with Rowdemis against a non-clan team:
    upload_2017-1-22_14-3-1.png
     
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  7. ensc

    ensc Generation 7
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    I've run into them a lot. I would say between 30% to 50% of the games and that's when I can get a game, because the Amped Hardpoint lobby is dead most of the time on the PC. So, to have to wait to get a game and then get thrown up against that crap every 1 out of 3 or 1 out of 2 games is total BS.
     
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  8. Derrame

    Derrame Generation 6

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    #28 Derrame, Jan 22, 2017
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2017
    i'd say 1/6 in european servers and 1/3 US servers
    besides you don't need to find an entire fps clan, three are enough to defeat a team of strangers easily
     
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  9. ensc

    ensc Generation 7
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    EXCELLENT point Derrame!
     
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  10. Ik0n88x

    Ik0n88x Generation 7
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    I don't know.. maybe it's just me.. I'd rather play good players. Me and a friend play a lot and just bullshit with each other and usually beat even full teams when we come up against them. I guess something they could do is add a 'mercenary' playlist where no parties are allowed but then you are dividing the playerbase even more.
     
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  11. ensc

    ensc Generation 7
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    Good suggestion! And for this purpose, I would be happy to divide the user base, because I don't want those clans infecting the general population and driving new players away.
     
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  12. Sgt_rawk

    Sgt_rawk Generation 7

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    I don't always play against teams, but when I do, I git gud.
     
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  13. Pitch_Invader

    Pitch_Invader Generation 2

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    I'd suggest that having half of the games you play wildly unfair/lopsided is not a good thing. Anymore I just don't have patience to stick with a side that is getting spanked. Recently on Dry Dock within the opening couple of minutes we were down something crazy like 25 to 180, and as I ran around the map I saw a bunch of my teammates camping. I'm pretty sure they were new and their camping allowed the other side to completely lock down the map. So I left.

    I think a lot of the maps now have gimmicks and when those are exploited it's no fun. Crash Site drives me nuts. What I don't understand is why Respawn doesn't change it so the spawn points are different at the start of the game. It doesn't matter if the map has a bunch of canyons if 80% of the game is over before one side pushes through the initial skirmish lines.

    Anyway, I can't wait for TITANFALL 2 to come out because it's going to be awesome. I think the Call Of Duty team did an okay job with this COD: Titanfall edition, but those COD guys just don't have a clue what made the first game one of the best games ever. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the COD: Titanfall team RUINED the game. I don't understand why everything is different in T2. When I play COD: Titanfall Edition I realize I am playing an inferior game that gives me barely any of the satisfaction of T1, and I am getting bored with it already.
     
  14. Ik0n88x

    Ik0n88x Generation 7
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    It is funny considering the same exact people that made Titanfall 1 made Titanfall 2... right down to game director.
     
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  15. MDVillarreal

    MDVillarreal Generation 3

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    Interesting. I'm in the camp that loved the original game and love this one as well, but still scratch my head at some of the design decisions they made (most glaring are the small number of maps and the small, open maps.)
     
  16. Ik0n88x

    Ik0n88x Generation 7
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    Me too. They might of had different people help or design in certain aspects and as far as number of maps, I'm thinking that may have been a time constraint thing pushed by EA. If you think about it, EA has made equally baffling decisions... let's release two of our games and have them directly compete against each other while a new CoD is launching..... :confused:
     
  17. Sgt_rawk

    Sgt_rawk Generation 7

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    Yeah, the original maps were spectacular in their simplicity. three lane wonders, lovely.
     
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  18. Ik0n88x

    Ik0n88x Generation 7
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    Most (if not all) Titanfall maps up to this point has been 3 lane layout... the difference was in the first game there was a lot more verticality and wallrun opportunity.
     
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  19. MDVillarreal

    MDVillarreal Generation 3

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    This. There's really not a whole lot of opportunity to do any effective wall running as the gaps between the walls tends to be so large that you have to double jump to get there, which breaks up a lot of the rhythm.
     
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  20. Pitch_Invader

    Pitch_Invader Generation 2

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    Just to refresh my memory I played Titanfall 1 last night. The map was Runoff and we had full teams. Here are several things that stood out:

    1. Navigating the old menus was difficult, and not being able to edit loadouts anytime sucked.
    2. Titanfall 1 is incredibly SLOW compared to TF2.
    3. I couldn't stop trying to slide around the map and not being able to slide made it seem like I was running in molasses.
    4. The game play experience was better because the map is better than what TF2 offers.
    5. I miss the old Titans.
    6. I miss the old rodeo mechanic of shooting into the cockpit.
    7. I ended up roasting everyone, 17 kills, 5 titan kills, 2 deaths.

    I'm so used to playing TF2 now which is like TF1 on crack that it was hard to adjust to the slower paced, more strategy-based playing style of TF1.

    There are so many things they did right in TF2, things that are wonderful improvements, but I don't understand why they threw away so much of what was awesome.

    By all means, add new titans to the mix, great idea. Add new weapons, sure, why not. And I really missed having Boosts because I wanted desperately to plant a Pilot Sentry on Runoff. Customizable titan and pilot skins is great, so are the banners and patches. Factions are good to alleviate the boredom with the maps but I have ended up staying with the faction whose leader is the least annoying, the rewards and bonuses don't seem any different.

    Personally I'm tired of the custom executions, be they titan or pilot. I think the titans worked better in TF1, easier to nuclear eject on opponents, easier to tell when you're about to blow up, easier to operate, and they made more sense in fights with other titans. Now I keep getting surprised when I go to melee a titan who is already showing the diagonal stripes of having their core exposed (and my titan has shield bars remaining), and yet I will lose a punchout and get executed. It doesn't make sense to me if both titans are slugging away equally that the one about to explode can possibly beat the one with more health.

    So we are at kind of a crossroads with the Titanfall series. This new game plays like a special mode, some permanently stimmed variation. It's just not the same feel as the old one and it really is Call of Duty in space.

    I think if they were really planning on fundamentally altering the game play style they should have designed maps that accommodated this new style. Instead, we get maps that are pretty but poorly conceived in terms of fun. Do any of the new maps even approach the brilliance of Airbase, Rise, Boneyard, Demeter, Relic, Smuggler's Cove, Training Ground, Swamplands, Wargames, Runoff, Dig Site, Export, Haven, Zone 18, Overlook, Corporate, or Sandtrap? God, I miss those maps! Since they ported Angel City to the new game, why can't they port all of them?

    I have tried waiting in lobbies for other games instead of Attrition but they seem to be mostly empty.
     
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