Matchmaking

[lawANDorder]

Unfair teams because of experienced players in one team and new players in the opposite team

We have a problem with matchmaking, a severe one that makes the game unenjoyable for new players. I just played some matches where one fraction had a lineup of top players and the other mainly consisted of new players. The matches have not been interesting and didn´t last very long, for the inferior team and those new players it must have been frustrating and demoralizing. Some players accused us of stacking the experienced players together which did not happen intentionally but doesn´t make it better for them in any way. The server emptied very fast and those players must have been very unhappy with the game itself.

I dont know how teams are made up but it is not randomly - there are too many matches in a row with the same players in one team together. Also we need a mechanism to prevent intentional teamstacking (all good players join in one team). 

A solution could be to use the global rank data for matchmaking. I know only players with steam account will rank but the majority of those experienced players is in the global rank data. There should be a limitaiton of how many top players can join the same team or a limit for the difference of points all ranked players in one team have in total in opposite to the sum of points the other team´s ranked players have together. The matchmaking could then divide the players corresponding to those limits in fair teams which would improve the experience for new players and increase the gameplay quality aswell. If you need all players ranked for this, make it a requirement and call it ranked servers.

Unfair teams because of players AFK

This impacts the early game heavily - today the team I was in had 20% AFK´s at the start. Depending on how dynamic a match is this can be a desaster. Because it affects the early game so much, it is not a solution to kick those players afterwards you realize it - it´s just too late then. There should be a mechanism to ensure only active players will be divided to the teams before the game starts. I can imagine those mechanisms:

• Add a input requirement at the time before the game starts and players spawn every player has to execute - a simple click or whatever. Only players that executed this input will be taken to the matchmaking, others will be kicked. The starting time should be increased so "slowloaders" have enough time to execute the required input (also I think increased starting time would solve the issue where after one long game the next game usually feels broken because players are smoking, get something to drink or whatever). 
• Spectator mode for players that haven´t been taking to matchmaking because of missing input. This would ofcourse decrease the ammount of active players per team which is a bad thing. The server should then let new players join the game which would increase the number of connected clients in total (those in the "lobby" + those who are playing). I like this idea because it would enable players to watch a match (and learn), let players join a full server (join into the "lobby") instead of leaving them behind with their frustration not being able to join the one availabe server with decent playercount. No idea if it´s possible but it would adress a bunch of problems if you gave us some kind of lobby for every server where people can wait for a free slot or just being parked as long as they are AFK.

Maybe you have better or more realistic ideas considering the development effort. Thanks for reading.

[Fffreak9999]

3 hours ago, lawANDorder said:

 

• Add a input requirement at the time before the game starts and players spawn every player has to execute - a simple click or whatever. Only players that executed this input will be taken to the matchmaking, others will be kicked. The starting time should be increased so "slowloaders" have enough time to execute the required input (also I think increased starting time would solve the issue where after one long game the next game usually feels broken because players are smoking, get something to drink or whatever). 
• Spectator mode for players that haven´t been taking to matchmaking because of missing input. This would ofcourse decrease the ammount of active players per team which is a bad thing. The server should then let new players join the game which would increase the number of connected clients in total (those in the "lobby" + those who are playing). I like this idea because it would enable players to watch a match (and learn), let players join a full server (join into the "lobby") instead of leaving them behind with their frustration not being able to join the one availabe server with decent playercount. No idea if it´s possible but it would adress a bunch of problems if you gave us some kind of lobby for every server where people can wait for a free slot or just being parked as long as they are AFK.

Currently teams are based on their entry into the level, so it is "random" based on the quality of their connection to the server, and as for your "slow loaders" part CT already has a 10 second increase in the delay of Game start, which helped quite a bit for a fair few players start at the actual match start not 10 seconds late.

 

At this moment, spectators take a slot on the server which would mean losing a player for a spectator. 

Also having everyone join a server as a spectator when full would probably increase the demands on a server once full, you could in theory have 100 potential players queued up to play on a server, That's a lot of data that needs to be sent to people.

 

p.s this is just hastily written, don't have much time ATM will update later

[Madkill40]

Players need to drill into their heads that if they start filling up another empty server because one is full that others are more likely to join it, so long as those players don't jump ship the moment a space is free on the once full server then more servers can be filled at any one time.

 

I've noticed that Marathon servers seem to be the preferred these days, probably because a game can still be really short but nobody has to suffer the frustration of a game ending when its getting good. 

 

Sidenote: Americans that want a US based server should think about donating to CT for an American based server, since the CT servers are so frequently preferred. That would definitely ensure more than one active server at a time with nobody forfeiting enjoyable gameplay at the cost of higher pings. 

[Agent]

13 hours ago, Fffreak9999 said:

Currently teams are based on their entry into the level, so it is "random" based on the quality of their connection to the server, and as for your "slow loaders" part CT already has a 10 second increase in the delay of Game start, which helped quite a bit for a fair few players start at the actual match start not 10 seconds late.

It's actually not based on connection order by default anymore, though this is true for servers which seem to have manually set their TeamMode value to 4 (such as CT). The default behavior is to shuffle teams based on the results on the previous game.

Sorting teams based on rank would be relatively easy, and I considered implementing it some time ago. That said, you would almost certainly want a certain value of randomness added to ranks, I think.

It would also be beneficial to get around to implementing ladder points if we wanted to go that route, rather than just having cumulative score.

[Fffreak9999]

The current problem with team mode 3 is that it tends to stack teams to 21v19 or for example 6v4 at no fault of the joining player.

this over balancing is an issue and leads to calls of team stacking.

 

 

[Madkill40]

22 hours ago, Agent said:

Sorting teams based on rank would be relatively easy, and I considered implementing it some time ago. That said, you would almost certainly want a certain value of randomness added to ranks, I think.

All even ranks on one team, all odd ranks on another team, unless a majority of players are of an even or odd ranked number, then parse the majority of excess players of even or odd ranked numbers to fill both teams evenly; if player is not using Steam and therefore unranked treat those players as the majority of excess?

Probably a better method than what I did there but I actually like Agent's idea a lot.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Madkill40

[Agent]

You want a degree of randomness so that it's just the same 2 teams against eachother over and over again.