Team Matchmaker Info&Discussion

[keyser]

My ideal scenario is that the people you are talking about (people that care about rating change) would play matchmaker. It is just the rational thing to do as it is the area where, if you care about teamgames, is where you get the most recognition for your improvement/capability. This means that if you want to play a serious custom game on a specific map, you can host a lobby where you have a restriction based on that matchmaker rating which would be shown in the lobby.

What i would propose is that we keep global rating, but we hide it. Then we give tools for host to balance the game without having the global rating displayed.
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2887
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2903
maybe you can adapt the algorithm, so you can lock some teams (2 players want to play together, 3 others wants to play together).
And then you can check the % of balance.

What we end up with, is a global rating that isn't displayed at all, but that still exist in order to balance custom games, so that people that want to play 1 map can still do it. If people want to be competitive they can play TMM, if people want to play lot of different maps (without necessarily being competitive) they can play TMM.
Only drawback is for people that want to shine on 1 map, and get a high rating on it. They won't be able to display it. But i think this is fair, in order to achieve what we want to achieve.

Issue is that the pull request i've shown aren't complete and we need time / more dev to make it work out.

also since no rating is displayed for hosting a TMM or a custom game, there won't be any kick of 0 rating player anymore.

[BlackYps]

I first thought about this as a troll-suggestion, but then I realized the idea may be not completely retarded. So here is my half-serious suggestions:

Have the players set a global rating themselfes. They could use their matchmaker rating or whatever other number they deem appropriate. This way people that dread the matchmaker so much that they don't even want to play a handful of games, can still have a rating displayed.
Now you may say that people will exaggerate their rating, but here is the thing:
1. They could do that before, we just remove the extra steps of stacking games to inflate your rating (Everyone knows that this is possible, but still many people cling to the believe that global rating is a good way to balance games)
2. Their incentive to do that is instantly gone, because now everybody knows that the 2k player could just as well have written that number in the rating field instead of "earning" it through playing games.

Spoiler: show

3. Also we learned in this thread that appantly any system, no matter how flawed, is better than none to balance the games

This number would not be changed by playing games, if you realize you have improved you just can adjust your rating manually.
This has the additional benefit that a person that only played one map can change their rating when trying out a different map.

[DeimosEvotec]

That doesn't make any sense at all.
At that point you could just post in lobby chat what you would estimate your rating to be on the given map.
There is no point for a selfset rating field as you would have to change it for different maps anyway.

[UnorthodoxBox]

I think a different perspective on faf global rating is needed to understand why it can be beneficial to completely remove it, and I will use Counter Strike: Global Offensive to illustrate. Currently, all ranked team games are custom games hosted on any map of choosing (ranked maps only of course) and with and ranked ruleset. This would be similar in cs:go if hostage situation on maps like office (a notoriously unbalanced mode) give you the same rating and rating change as ranked on dust2 or overpass (arguably the most balanced maps). This would lead to people farming up to higher ranks on those broken hostage maps (farming rating on a single map i.e. dual gap) and if they every tried to play normal ranked modes (like playing a random 4v4 on a different map like wonder or hilly), they just get completely destroyed.

Now of course it could also be argued that team game players are also farming their rating on 3 maps only, but the point is not who is farming rating or not. It is that in normal games like counter strike that have ranked and custom modes, the custom modes provide no rating and there is no balancing, yet plenty of people still play them and have fun. One of the biggest hurdles in faf is that different maps completely change the meta play style. even different 10x10 team game maps have vastly different playstyles; for example, canis river 5v5 is focused mainly on only 2 players fighting with units, while the other 3 focus mostly on eco. Then you take wonder 5v5 open, and have 4 players focus on fighting, with 1 player each ecoing/sniping other players. This isn't rigid, and you can play differently or do well, but it is just an example of metas formed.

Global rating right now is mostly ignored by smart hosts, and only paid attention to in order to make people who complain about game quality percentage happy. Hosts familiar with the players in their lobby usually can guess who will beat who, regardless of what their rating is, and even more so in the dual gap and setons community. Balancing already can be done with no rating at all, but optimal balance would no longer work, which probably should be looked at.

Really the point I am trying to make is that team matchmaker should be looked at similarly to ranked modes in other games, and global games should be seen simlar to custom servers.

[Mach]

global rating is used all the time to balance games, and it works most of time in any lobby I join, for example people put 1200v1300 on seton navy and 800v800 on front, stuff like that, and it works, both of those players are similarly skilled and dont stomp each other, unless you are playing in high rating lobbies (which are a minority in global), hosts guess who will beat who via their ratings/game count, not memory (unless they know someone is overrated/underrated), you cannot consider a high level player's opinion on what low level player lobbies are like (which are a majority of custom games), last I checked all of you are ~2000 rated, yet you say you know what low level lobbies are like, like when did you last play in one to be able to say this will be beneficial to them (esp. considering by playing in them in first place, you are unbalancing them as your rating is 1000 more than other players)? you may know all the players that join your lobbies and how good they are, but in low level lobbies there are more people than you can keep track of constantly, to use solely your memory to balance.

global rating removal will like ftx said definitely cause a problem after some time, as custom only players that dont play tmm (something you cannot know whether they will or not) will keep their rating after by playing customs only they get way better than their rating suggests, and it is absolutely unnecessary to do as tmm doesnt depend on global rating removal

[Azraeel]

last I checked all of you are ~2000 rated, yet you say you know what low level lobbies are like

He had to get to 2k somehow... Smart guy

[Blodir]

Btw I feel like everyone in this discussion is expecting TMM system to be perfect from the get go. More than likely there will be at least some technical issues, shitty map pools, not being able to play with friends etc. etc. If you remove global there is no coming back

[FtXCommando]

We've done a private matchmaker test. It seems like we're able to create a 2v2 game successfully and tell the server where to put players properly.

Next step for us is to move onto making sure the server is going to be capable of making proper balanced games based on the rating of players.

[FtXCommando]

Btw I feel like everyone in this discussion is expecting TMM system to be perfect from the get go. More than likely there will be at least some technical issues, shitty map pools, not being able to play with friends etc. etc. If you remove global there is no coming back

Anyone expecting that didn't read my first post.
1) The discussion is built on the assumption of minimal problems with matchmaker implementation
2) It is built on the assumption that 2v2 and 4v4 both exist at a minimum.

The first public matchmaker will be getting released as a 2v2 matchmaker, meaning that there would be a transition period between removing global and having matchmaker.

Keyser's solution (talked more about it on zulip so I had a better understanding) is something I'm willing to accept as another solution to global here. Thanks for presenting it.

In regards to Box's post, that is basically my current mindset explained by another person.

[Mach]

can you explain keyser's solution, because I dont see how you can use global rating to balance lobbies without it being visible, unless you mean it not being visible outside of custom lobbies?