MM - Good team players win matches, not tiers

[xenopathia]

I never agree players complaining about MM according to tiers right in the beginning of the match. 

Give a decent team T10 ships and the other team T8's full of good team players, who do you think will win?

 

I believe the MM should be based mostly on player skills.

 

What is more satisfying than a competitive battle with a tension holding to the end of the match. Even if you loose.

And what is more frustrating than loosing with a huge margin? (8 against 2 ships etc...)

 

I know this topic is discussed many times, I just brought back due to explanations in PT 0.5.8 regarding MM improvements that are solely focused on tiers.

 

[eliastion]

Tier-based MM is there to give everyone possibly fair starting ground.

 

Skill-based MM is in fact what many people ACCUSE WG of doing - they whine how MM supposedly puts good players in bad teams to ensure 50% winrate. That's precisely what you suggest: better players getting matched with bad players so that each team has 50% win chance (meaning that everyone's win% would be 50% if the MM worked perfectly).

 

I don't believe such a system exists and I don't want it to exist. Skill-based MM makes sense ONLY when it's coupled with some form of ranking. And this doesn't work well for big-team games like WoWs. It's no mistake that Ranked (which actually does have a form of skill-based MM where your Rank determines what allies and enemies you face) is a 7v7 format. The largeer the teams, the more games you have 'till your average results start properly reflecting your average contribution to victory.

[XbodzioXplX]

If the player base would be like 10 mln I would agree with you. The MM could link players on every side good by tiers and skills.

 

Reality is - it is not that easy.

 

So I say:

- tiers is first thing that should be equal

- there cannot be difference between DD number in domination mode (since those little sneaky #$^^& are better for capture the base)

- there cannot be something like one team have IJN DDs and the other US or RU ones (it's not balanced in terms of deffending themselves) or IJN BB in one team and US BB in another,

- fail division should stop (the game should not allowed tier 3 and tier 8 in division; I would say it shouldn't even tier 4 and 6)

 

And the players skills should be random and players should not see it (no XVM). We should encounter a ship and try to destroy it, not to look at his stats and say "I'm out of here!".

 

 

The tension is build up with team work mostly from my point of view. Examples:

1 - today our Fubuki could be killed by Benson who was just around a corner - I've seen it in Atlanta so quickly msg to him "Fubuki wait for me". He was saved.

2 - another better example - Trident map. Lemming train on one side. Just one Yorck on the other side. He was alone but hold 3 ships and then I've noticed torps from hidden Benson that was rushing into our base. Quick chat - "I spot you kill" and mission acomplished.

3 - and a bad example from yesterday. Tears of Desert. I'm in Roon and our Yamato from C cap goes straight to A cap on start. Of course behind the islands. I msg him "Yamato help, we need you". "I'm playing my own game". So all the team shouted him "coward" and other names. He went A (in BB... from C cap to A cap...), then killed 3 ships and he said "see, I'm not the bad man". We just killed him with our anger - he wasn't a team player and those 3 kills was a kill steal.

 

So I have wonderfull memories with coop with some guys from my team, then performing a Rambo Rush.

 

So we should learn how to coop.

And I don't know how to do that. How to learn gamers to play together while in random mode...

 

 

EDIT:

Just red this:

Tier-based MM is there to give everyone possibly fair starting ground.

 

Skill-based MM is in fact what many people ACCUSE WG of doing - they whine how MM supposedly puts good players in bad teams to ensure 50% winrate. That's precisely what you suggest: better players getting matched with bad players so that each team has 50% win chance (meaning that everyone's win% would be 50% if the MM worked perfectly).

 

I don't believe such a system exists and I don't want it to exist. 

 

Well said. Welllllllll said.

[XbodzioXplX]

Oh they heared my prayers:

 

http://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/public-test/public-test-058/

 

NICE!

 

No fail division.

Equal tiers.

Quite exact number of DDs and BBs

 

NICE!

[_Teob_]

I totally disagree.

 

Yamatos, Gearings, Moskvas, Zaos and Hakuryus will stomp their tier VIII equivalents. How would a New Orleans ever deal with a Des Moines. Yes it might happen occasionally but overall tier X ships are a lot more powerful.

 

In fact I'll do you one better, a team can just take tier X cruisers and DDs and 1 tier X CV and you can bring whatever you want from tier VIII and below and I am pretty sure that the tier X team will still win (with Moskva's happily bouncing tier VIII BB shells all day).

 

 

[malcheus]

A team with lower tiers or a less favorable composition has to work harder to overcome the difference; they will still win quite often, but they just have to play better for it. 

 

Balancing based on player skill is a very strange idea, 

If you win a lot (or do a lot of damage / get a lot of kills/ get high average XP) you end up in a higher league, where the opposition is better and you win less (and get less of the other stats);

If you perform poorly, you will demoted and those same stats go up.

In other words, the game rewards poor performance. 

 

Or even worse if you do it without the leagues, but with a mixed population per game: the better you perform, the more you get teamed up with poor players. 

Buy a botted acount, and you get a lifetime of good teammates for free!

[Goats_Beard]

How do you propose measuring skill?

 

I do better in some ships than others and worse in some classes than others. There is also the level of captain and the grind and games played in a particular ship.

 

imo attempting to balance teams based on skill, even if you could define it, wouldn't result in anything much changing from the way it is now.

 

 

[xenopathia]

 

Tier-based MM is there to give everyone possibly fair starting ground.

 

Skill-based MM is in fact what many people ACCUSE WG of doing - they whine how MM supposedly puts good players in bad teams to ensure 50% winrate. That's precisely what you suggest: better players getting matched with bad players so that each team has 50% win chance (meaning that everyone's win% would be 50% if the MM worked perfectly).

 

I don't believe such a system exists and I don't want it to exist. Skill-based MM makes sense ONLY when it's coupled with some form of ranking. And this doesn't work well for big-team games like WoWs. It's no mistake that Ranked (which actually does have a form of skill-based MM where your Rank determines what allies and enemies you face) is a 7v7 format. The largeer the teams, the more games you have 'till your average results start properly reflecting your average contribution to victory.

 

I agree that a fair starting ground should be given to all players to increase the competitiveness in team battles.

I am not scientific here but what I believe is the Tier effect on end result is less than players effect by percentage.

 

Btw I don't mean WR by skill. I think skill in general consists of many parameters= WR, WR according to classes and ships, Experience, Average Damage, K/D etc. 

And I know how difficult it is to match the perfect pool of players according to these parameters since there are yet "accordingly" few players in wows.

 

 

 

 

[Userext]

Skill based MM already exists. Its called rank battles

 

[Shaka_D]

Tier-based MM is there to give everyone possibly fair starting ground.

 

Skill-based MM is in fact what many people ACCUSE WG of doing - they whine how MM supposedly puts good players in bad teams to ensure 50% winrate. That's precisely what you suggest: better players getting matched with bad players so that each team has 50% win chance (meaning that everyone's win% would be 50% if the MM worked perfectly).

 

I don't believe such a system exists and I don't want it to exist. Skill-based MM makes sense ONLY when it's coupled with some form of ranking. And this doesn't work well for big-team games like WoWs. It's no mistake that Ranked (which actually does have a form of skill-based MM where your Rank determines what allies and enemies you face) is a 7v7 format. The largeer the teams, the more games you have 'till your average results start properly reflecting your average contribution to victory.

 

Nobody knows for certain whether there is anything other that a tier-based MM in WoWs. There may well be other aspects to it we don't know of, there may not be. Some people see apparent patterns and are accused of observational bias, etc. WG will never disclose the true nature fo their MM and as such there will be a lot up to speculation...either way.

[Ictogan]

Player skill is a stupid thing to take into account. It means that good players will be more likely to be matched with tomatoes and bad players will be more likely to be matched with good players.

[daki]

I believe the MM should be based mostly on player skills.

 

What is more satisfying than a competitive battle with a tension holding to the end of the match. Even if you loose.

And what is more frustrating than loosing with a huge margin? (8 against 2 ships etc...)

 

 

Lets assume there is a metric to calculate and track "skill".

Lets also assume that WG implements an algorithm for skill based MM.

 

By far the biggest issue I have with it is that only in theory you have plenty of exciting well balanced matches.

However, reality is not so simple. Just a small example:

- No player can play consistently at a certain skill level.

- Even great players have epic fail moments

- In case of epic fail, looking from single match perspective, that great player basically behaved like a random low-skill bob (emphasis on single match and not large number of matches)

 

Since MM cannot predict during queue selection if a player will have a good match or not (or that he is sober; or willing to do his best and not just yolo around...), in reality we end up again with a random number of "low skill" players equivalent distributed randomly in both teams.

Which means still plenty of "unbalanced" games, roflstopms and whatnot - as it is the case even without "SBMM".

We would just have much more rage and whine, accusations against WG, fellow players...

 

All in all, while a nice concept for philosophical discussions during a cup of tea or coffee, bad and impossible to implement well idea for WoWs.

[Aotearas]

I never agree players complaining about MM according to tiers right in the beginning of the match. 

Give a decent team T10 ships and the other team T8's full of good team players, who do you think will win?

 

I believe the MM should be based mostly on player skills.

 

 

Give a decent team the tier Xs and the other decent team the tier VIIIs and violá, suddenly the "it's all the player, not the ship" argument falls flat on the [edited].

 

Just because skill can migitate disadvantagous base situations doesn't mean matchmaking should strive to make an as equal playing field as possible.

 

And whilst I'd like to see a more skillbased matchmaking, that is an impossibility to properly code since skill involves so many situational variables that it's impossible to quantify in simple numbers so a balancer could weight it against other players. As such, the most practical solution is to create a matchmaking that doesn't hand one team an advantage in ship (-types, tiers, division, etc. pp).

Fair enough, the really bad MM screwups are thankfully rare (though I typically do get one or two BS matchmaking each gaming session where only looking at ships you could say one team would have a clear advantage over the other), but improving the system to migitate such stuff is a necessity.

[JiksTBS]

 

Give a decent team the tier Xs and the other decent team the tier VIIIs and violá, suddenly the "it's all the player, not the ship" argument falls flat on the [edited].

 

Just because skill can migitate disadvantagous base situations doesn't mean matchmaking should strive to make an as equal playing field as possible.

 

And whilst I'd like to see a more skillbased matchmaking, that is an impossibility to properly code since skill involves so many situational variables that it's impossible to quantify in simple numbers so a balancer could weight it against other players. As such, the most practical solution is to create a matchmaking that doesn't hand one team an advantage in ship (-types, tiers, division, etc. pp).

Fair enough, the really bad MM screwups are thankfully rare (though I typically do get one or two BS matchmaking each gaming session where only looking at ships you could say one team would have a clear advantage over the other), but improving the system to migitate such stuff is a necessity.

 

I really, really would not want to see skill based MM. In that the reward for having, say a good and improving WR (probably the best long term measure of a player's contribution), would be progressively worse team-mates.

 

I don't even think this would be enjoyable for the half of the player base with under 50% WR ... it would result in the few exceptional players on each side dominating things.

[Aotearas]

 

I really, really would not want to see skill based MM. In that the reward for having, say a good and improving WR (probably the best long term measure of a player's contribution), would be progressively worse team-mates.

 

I don't even think this would be enjoyable for the half of the player base with under 50% WR ... it would result in the few exceptional players on each side dominating things.

 

If you bracketed the player base according to skill gates, matches would keep being a lively bout.

That is of course assuming those brackets would be populated enough so people with above or below average skills actually find matches ...

 

Like I said, ultimately a skillbased matchmaking is systematically impossible.

[JiksTBS]

 

If you bracketed the player base according to skill gates, matches would keep being a lively bout.

That is of course assuming those brackets would be populated enough so people with above or below average skills actually find matches ...

 

Like I said, ultimately a skillbased matchmaking is systematically impossible.

 

Ah ... I see what you mean now. So a series of player sets ranging from deep purple to black (going by Warships Today color schemes), playing against people of the same ability. That would less horrible, in fact doesn't sound half bad TBH but still would lead to all players trending towards 50%.

 

Lots of practical problems to implement such a scheme, as you say though.

[Defactio]

I never agree players complaining about MM according to tiers right in the beginning of the match. 

Give a decent team T10 ships and the other team T8's full of good team players, who do you think will win?

 

I believe the MM should be based mostly on player skills.

 

What is more satisfying than a competitive battle with a tension holding to the end of the match. Even if you loose.

And what is more frustrating than loosing with a huge margin? (8 against 2 ships etc...)

 

I know this topic is discussed many times, I just brought back due to explanations in PT 0.5.8 regarding MM improvements that are solely focused on tiers.

 

 

It's 'lose', not 'loose'.

[eliastion]

 

It's 'lose', not 'loose'.

 

And you waited almost a week to reply with this constructive comment?  

[Kenliero]

Player skill is a stupid thing to take into account. It means that good players will be more likely to be matched with tomatoes and bad players will be more likely to be matched with good players.

 

Exactly... We shouldn't be "rewarding" bad gameplay, by giving better allies.

[Kastike]

Once again I have to ask, how can one measure player's skill level. WR, damage done, XP and all that are currently measured against general player base. If you put really good players playing against equally good players, their stats would soon be identical with bad players, who would only play against bad players. A lot of posts about the great MM conspiracy and a lot of posts about introducing skill to MM, yet never have I seen any suggestions how could player's skill level be measured.

[Kenliero]

Once again I have to ask, how can one measure player's skill level. WR, damage done, XP and all that are currently measured against general player base. If you put really good players playing against equally good players, their stats would soon be identical with bad players, who would only play against bad players. A lot of posts about the great MM conspiracy and a lot of posts about introducing skill to MM, yet never have I seen any suggestions how could player's skill level be measured.

 

One can measure players skill level... by making these changes to ranked battles:

 

1: Remove ALL irrevocable ranks

2: Make always 4 stars per rank

3: Give extra star for reaching every new rank

4: Make total of 36 ranks. Battlesgroups every 5 levels... like 36-32 play together, 31-27 play together. 26-22 play together.... 21-17 play together... 16-12 play together... 11-7 play together.... 6-2 play together... Rank 1 = T10 ships together

5: Make Ranked Battles season 3 months long. Twice a year (with 3 month breaks)

 

This way good players will "settle" around ranks ranks 1-10,  above averages around 10-20 and below averages around 20-30, bots to 32+, All players start at rank 25.

This way everyone can play in their own skill level and you can also measure skill.

 

Thoughts about this suggestion?

 

EDIT: Let's add Tier requirements also:

 

Ranks 1:  Tier 10

Ranks 11-2 Tier 9/8

Ranks 12-21 Tier 8/7

Ranks 22-31 Tier 7/6

Ranks 31+ Tier 6/5

[ghostbuster_]

I never agree players complaining about MM according to tiers right in the beginning of the match. 

Give a decent team T10 ships and the other team T8's full of good team players, who do you think will win?

 

I believe the MM should be based mostly on player skills.

 

What is more satisfying than a competitive battle with a tension holding to the end of the match. Even if you loose.

And what is more frustrating than loosing with a huge margin? (8 against 2 ships etc...)

 

I know this topic is discussed many times, I just brought back due to explanations in PT 0.5.8 regarding MM improvements that are solely focused on tiers.

 

it should be both tier and skill based. because the good players, who play tier 8 ships, would mostly face tier X ships if you do it only skill based. 

[KHETTIFER]

it should be both tier and skill based. because the good players, who play tier 8 ships, would mostly face tier X ships if you do it only skill based. 

 

Funny cos i regularly see Yamato's, Zao's, ect ect when i play my T8 ships, totally fun and balanced to be matched against a division of 2x Yamato and a Zao, yeah my Atago loves that and can totally compete.

[RamirezKurita]

Once again I have to ask, how can one measure player's skill level. WR, damage done, XP and all that are currently measured against general player base. If you put really good players playing against equally good players, their stats would soon be identical with bad players, who would only play against bad players. A lot of posts about the great MM conspiracy and a lot of posts about introducing skill to MM, yet never have I seen any suggestions how could player's skill level be measured.

 

​Simple, you take into account the level of their opponents too. Most games with functioning matchmakers (I'm hesitant to call WoWS system a "matchmaker" as it currently just throws together players rather than actually making matches) have hidden matchmaking ratings (MMR) for players, and the relative matchmaking ratings between the two teams alters the precise effects the game's outcome has, with the team with the higher matchmaking ratings losing more on a loss and winning less on a win as the matchmaker expects them to win; with fully balanced teams having identical effects for wins and losses. It's basically just ranked but with all ranks being hidden.

 

Unfortunately, the only real way of measuring a players skill in game currently is through win rate, as every other potential factor doesn't take into account every detail. If instead, every player was initially assigned an MMR of 10,000 for example, with a win against an evenly matched team giving an additional 100 MMR and a loss taking 100 MMR, then you would see good players begin rising in MMR while the poor players fall, and they will continue rising and falling until their matchmaking rating is fully representative of their skill at which point their win rate will level out at 50% as the matchmaker accounts for them properly. Teams will never be 100% balanced, so giving shifting the MMR bonuses/losses slightly to account for differing MMRs between teams can keep the players' MMRs representative (so a team with a higher MMR that yields a predicted win rate of 55% would lose 110 MMR on a loss but only gain 90 MMR on a win as they are expected to win more often).

 

Obviously the stat gathering aspect of this takes a while, which is why in most games it can take literally hundreds of games for you to get to where you should be, and WoWS has this problem worse due to different ships functioning quite differently to each other. This unfortunately leaves us in a position of either shoehorning in a "one MMR fits all" approach which would likely be highly inaccurate as different players have different performances in different ships, having individual MMRs for each ship which would take far too much data gathering on each player to balance things (nobody really wants to have to play 100+ games in a single ship to start having balanced matches), or to have some kind of hybrid where it takes player specific MMR data from individual ships, classes, nations and tiers and combines them into an effective MMR for a given ship for that player (which would be quick and accurate, but would require some serious balancing work on the dev side of things).

[ghostbuster_]

 

Funny cos i regularly see Yamato's, Zao's, ect ect when i play my T8 ships, totally fun and balanced to be matched against a division of 2x Yamato and a Zao, yeah my Atago loves that and can totally compete.

 

everyone gets tier Xs while playing tier 8 ships. btw just checked you atago statts and it didnt seem like you can compete yamatos and zaos with it.