Cross posted from [email protected], but really applies to most games with matchmaking that I’ve played…
Most of the games I play are so niche that ‘matchmaking’ simply consists of whoever’s available. Or sometimes it even requires pinging people on Discord.
Yup, either this or the matchmaking is in find-the-most-toxic-people-available mode. I almost stopped playing online to be honest, I’d rather play couch co-op or even a good solo game.
Personally, I think it’s about how impresonal modern matchmaking is.
You’re only ever playing against “enemies” and “enemies” should be “hated with the hot passion of a burning sun”. And if you lose, you’re never at fault, because your teammates sabotaged you!
People don’t have to maintain cordial relationships, because they will never meet their teammates or opponents again.
Compare that to stuff that works using servers, where each team is made up of the same pool of people from one round to the next. People actually make friends with each other, friend or foe, and have more fun as a result.
Yeah, you unlocked many memories of mine. I played CS back in 90s, train with bots and learn map layouts at home, then play team vs team in a club. A bit later with ADSL started to play online and it was still kinda cool. When life fast forwarded me to Quake Arena and R6S it was very fun but I never ever made any online friend. Maybe a couple of people in R6 with whom I played a few times but even then the toxicity outweighed the team play fun.
Surprisingly, that somehow makes for far more enjoyable and friendly competition.
Go figure.
Many games do this intentionally btw. Make you lose some rounds and then give you an easy one to keep you hooked
I also think it’s an impossible problem to solve.
The same player isn’t going to perform identically every session, and accounting for every possible weapon or character/class they might play, potential synergies with teammates, or potential advantages/disadvantages in matchups against any given opponents…
It all makes for a literally infinite number of variables, all of which must be accounted for.
The correct way to get interesting matches, imo, is to make it semi-random, and not try to have all the players on both teams be exactly the same skill level. Rather, put players on both teams from a range of estimated skill levels. This way both teams have weaker links for the other team to potentially exploit, and both teams have strong players which will try to stop that.
Instead, the system should just enforce common sense stuff, like not pitting someone who is literally playing for the very first time, against a team with someone who is 2000 hours in, and hence might straight up deny the new guy a chance to play at all.
I should know. I literally wrote THE team balancer for titanfall 2 community servers. For a time it even used the Tone online database of player stats, to know how to balance players that had never played on a given server before.
I was genuinely shocked how good the resulting games were. All I did was take the completely random players that decide to join a server, and simply figured out a slightly smarter way than other balancer scripts at the time, to divide them into two teams that are close enough to equal.
Nothing better than finding a good community server but sadly not always possible nowadays.
Yeah I still remember team fortress classic servers I would go back to all the time. It was nice to go into a server where everyone knew your name. It was like being a regular at a restaurant or bar.
I have fond memories of TFC and TF2 too. Good community server and civilised people using their microphone are the dream.
Yep i also ran my own server with a the sniper war mod. If you wanted to play that mod my server was only a handful servers setup to play it. We had a good group Randos would come in and the ones that stuck around became mods and any changes to the server. We held a vote with the regulars and the mods and myself. There were times I was even out voted and we implemented stuff I didn’t agree with.
I swear, some of the best titanfall 2 matches I ever played were on northstar custom servers.
The last time I had something like that was when BF3 was still the most revent entry in the franchise. I knew how the game would go by looking at which side had more names that I recognized lol, good times
When Dead By Daylights matchmaking system prioritizes getting you into a match faster instead of getting you into a balanced match, and matches you with less than 100 hours of playtime as Killer into an “Unemployment Lobby” of a 4 goblin pre-made with 50k combined hours ready to bully you for 55 minutes:
(Ask me how I know this lol)
