Please Make a Proper Matchmaking System

[Malus.2184]

The system as it is is killing the game mode. New players get discouraged to participate when they constantly get teamed up against players who have reams more experience than them, know the rules of PvP, know the ins and outs of the maps, and know what roles that team should have to be successful. It's also annoying for experienced players, at least for me. I just came off losing the Nth random match because I got teamed with players who had no clue against a team of players that knew everything. It's no surprise who won, and this is how it always goes. I would rather wait ten minutes for a match where I have a proper experience against even-matched opponents than get into one in two minutes where I'll either ROFLstomp the opponent or be farmed by them endlessly because of the team composition being unequal in terms of experience. Neither outcomes are particularly enjoyable for me as I either zone out because it's too easy or I get frustrated because it's impossible to do anything.

The latter is described in the developmental psychology theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and will influence how people approach the activity, both new and old and this is killing the game mode. While I have no metrics I can see the price of Shard of Glory. Since the market is controlled by supply and demand as the principal factor on the price then you can roughly gouge the state of the supply by looking at the price and the price of Shard of Glory has risen dramatically over the past year, which is a clear sign that the supply has decreased, and a decreased supply is a sign of fewer people participating. The price slowly going up is a sign that people are checking out and eventually this will result in the game mode no longer being able to sustain itself, and once this critical mass has been reached the game mode will die.

I implore you ANet, hire someone with a degree in Occupational Therapy to do a complete analysis on all the systems in the game and how they affect the players according to the ZPD. People who do game development can crunch numbers all the numbers they like while the former can give them the perspective their education in no way gives them. Every game is an activity of participating in the game and no one knows more about that than people with a degree in occupational therapy.

I have one and I can tell the issues with all your systems and how they need to be changed to have a positive effect on the people playing this game!

[SlayerXX.7138]

There is a easy trick to improve the matchmaker. Decrease the rating range the matchmaker allows. Done by changing one or two numbers in a file. Right now the matchmaker allows for a difference of up to 1200 rating after only 10 minutes. That is the padding added to find games, so people don't have to wait too long. From the wiki:
"The first phase, called filtering, gathers players based on their current MMR. The primary purpose of this phase is to both reduce the number of players being considered for a match, and to ensure that the match is appropriate given each player's skill level. Over time, padding is added to your player rating. While this may decrease match quality, it helps ensure that outliers still receive matches."
The problem is, on the PvP forum 80% of the People are outliers, so don't expect a good faith discussion.

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[Malus.2184]

4 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Right now the matchmaker allows for a difference of up to 1200 rating after only 10 minutes.

No wonder the system is so kitten.

[Bazsi.2734]

8 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

The problem is, on the PvP forum 80% of the People are outliers, so don't expect a good faith discussion.

The problem is, people playing PvP are outliers in general. We are a fracture of a fracture of the overall playerbase. It doesn't matter how good or bad the matchmaker is when there are no players. Not to mention this matchmaker worked perfectly back when the gamemode was populated(up until like late 2018). Unless you count the removal of most amulets as new content, PvP is basicly stagnating/deteriorating for 5 years now. No change to the matchmaker will fix that.

[Mini Crinny.6190]

the money is in pve, enjoy what you have

Edited July 25, 2023 by Mini Crinny.6190

[Malus.2184]

13 hours ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

The problem is, people playing PvP are outliers in general. We are a fracture of a fracture of the overall playerbase. It doesn't matter how good or bad the matchmaker is when there are no players. Not to mention this matchmaker worked perfectly back when the gamemode was populated(up until like late 2018). Unless you count the removal of most amulets as new content, PvP is basicly stagnating/deteriorating for 5 years now. No change to the matchmaker will fix that.

No, it was a self-defeating system as entropy will always happen. Entropy is a constant of the universe and is present in everything that exists since it will eventually degenerate and stop existing.

If the system only worked when there were enough people, it never really worked as it has a serious condition to it that means that the negative effect of it snowballed once people left. To achieve stability in a system you want a 1:1 ratio of people leaving and participating. Under what you described the amount of people joining would be discouraged by the effects of people leaving, and as such, you'll eventually end up with just people leaving.

To have a system like you mentioned you need to have hard sign-up and a soft sign-up coexisting and being mutually exclusive. The hard sign-up is that you never get matched with people above a specific rating and as long as you're in that system it'll take as long as it takes to match you up with people of equal skill to you. The other system would work as it is now, that way people would have a choice.

[Bazsi.2734]

I have many ideas how to do things better in this game, be it systems/classes/builds or only a singular skill... but funnily enough one of the few things I can't think to improve is the matchmaker. With that said:

27 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

To have a system like you mentioned you need to have hard sign-up and a soft sign-up coexisting and being mutually exclusive. The hard sign-up is that you never get matched with people above a specific rating and as long as you're in that system it'll take as long as it takes to match you up with people of equal skill to you. The other system would work as it is now, that way people would have a choice.

How would your system work exactly? And how would that be better for the overall player experience than the current one? 

[Bunbury.8472]

3 minutes ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

I have many ideas how to do things better in this game, be it systems/classes/builds or only a singular skill... but funnily enough one of the few things I can't think to improve is the matchmaker. With that said:

How would your system work exactly? And how would that be better for the overall player experience than the current one? 

with only 100 plat accounts in NA, and a decent amount of them alts it means that once you leave gold rank you will wait hours to get a game. because 9 of those plat players have to log on and queue up, and with there being less than 100 plat players that is unlikely. may as well just ban people when they reach plat 1, same outcome pretty much.

it's an omegalul that new accounts are gold1, considering legend is dead and it's the second highest bracket. new players are queued with the best player this dead mode has to offer to ensure they have as bad of an experience in ranked as possible lol.

[Malus.2184]

10 hours ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

How would your system work exactly? And how would that be better for the overall player experience than the current one? 

People get more encouraged to do things when they feel that they have a chance of doing it, as described in this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development. The TLDR is that if you want people to feel encouraged to seek out A-level performance they need to first have the courage to do D-level, then they'll be encouraged to do C-level, then B-level, and finally A-level. If a person with a D-level performance is placed against a person with even a C-level performance without feeling that they've been properly prepared for it they'll just feel that the gap is too large for them to ever overcome and quit in frustration. This is what we see now, the system itself discourages people from further participation, which can be seen in the price for Shards of Glory where either the demand has skyrocketed, or the supply has plummeted as they have about tripled in price.

10 hours ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

with only 100 plat accounts in NA, and a decent amount of them alts it means that once you leave gold rank you will wait hours to get a game. because 9 of those plat players have to log on and queue up, and with there being less than 100 plat players that is unlikely. may as well just ban people when they reach plat 1, same outcome pretty much.

it's an omegalul that new accounts are gold1, considering legend is dead and it's the second highest bracket. new players are queued with the best player this dead mode has to offer to ensure they have as bad of an experience in ranked as possible lol.

It'll even itself out eventually as players are scaffolded into the higher brackets. At first, it will be extremely uneven, just like the Alliance matchups in WvW. Once the system works the first few pairings will be uneven until the system has smoothed itself out.

[SlayerXX.7138]

13 hours ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

with only 100 plat accounts in NA, and a decent amount of them alts it means that once you leave gold rank you will wait hours to get a game. because 9 of those plat players have to log on and queue up, and with there being less than 100 plat players that is unlikely. may as well just ban people when they reach plat 1, same outcome pretty much.

Yes exactly. Let the Plat players have their fun. Next year they can q against silvers because the gold players left the game.

[Bazsi.2734]

4 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

People get more encouraged to do things when they feel that they have a chance of doing it, as described in this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development. The TLDR is that if you want people to feel encouraged to seek out A-level performance they need to first have the courage to do D-level, then they'll be encouraged to do C-level, then B-level, and finally A-level. If a person with a D-level performance is placed against a person with even a C-level performance without feeling that they've been properly prepared for it they'll just feel that the gap is too large for them to ever overcome and quit in frustration. This is what we see now, the system itself discourages people from further participation, which can be seen in the price for Shards of Glory where either the demand has skyrocketed, or the supply has plummeted as they have about tripled in price.

It'll even itself out eventually as players are scaffolded into the higher brackets. At first, it will be extremely uneven, just like the Alliance matchups in WvW. Once the system works the first few pairings will be uneven until the system has smoothed itself out.

I still don't get what you'd change. Posting physchology links is nice for those who want to learn stuff, but after reading it I found it basicly irrelevant to the problem this thread is about. What you say about being discouraged by facing opponents who are too strong is true. Matchmaking also gets worse as the playerbase bleeds out, which becomes a self propagating cycle, that's inevitable. However that's not the original reason the playerbase is diminishing, and also I don't see how any change to the matchmaker could stop/reverse this trend.
As I've said before, my solution would be to give PvP actual development time. New rewards/titles/maps/gamemodes, sponsored tournaments even(this is not about being realistic, this is a hypothethical world where we can actually solve PvP-s problems)That would increase both player retention and the influx of new players... and once there are enough players to matchmake with, match quality would cease to be a problem.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Bazsi.2734

[Malus.2184]

42 minutes ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

I still don't get what you'd change. Posting physchology links is nice for those who want to learn stuff, but after reading it I found it basicly irrelevant to the problem this thread is about. What you say about being discouraged by facing opponents who are too strong is true. Matchmaking also gets worse as the playerbase bleeds out, which becomes a self propagating cycle, that's inevitable. However that's not the original reason the playerbase is diminishing, and also I don't see how any change to the matchmaker could stop/reverse this trend.
As I've said before, my solution would be to give PvP actual development time. New rewards/titles/maps/gamemodes, sponsored tournaments even(this is not about being realistic, this is a hypothethical world where we can actually solve PvP-s problems)That would increase both player retention and the influx of new players... and once there are enough players to matchmake with, match quality would cease to be a problem.

It's the causal issue of people vanishing. Everything else is just a number that can be easily adjusted. Ultimately people want a fair challenge and the ZPD is relevant as everything you do is an activity, PvP is no exception and every activity will follow the principles explained in the ZPD whether it does so intentionally or unintentionally. And  system that disregard that will eventually break.

[Bazsi.2734]

2 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

It's the causal issue of people vanishing. Everything else is just a number that can be easily adjusted. Ultimately people want a fair challenge and the ZPD is relevant as everything you do is an activity, PvP is no exception and every activity will follow the principles explained in the ZPD whether it does so intentionally or unintentionally. And  system that disregard that will eventually break.

Yeah, very cool so... for the last time: what actual changes should be done?

[shion.2084]

2 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

It's the causal issue of people vanishing. Everything else is just a number that can be easily adjusted. Ultimately people want a fair challenge and the ZPD is relevant as everything you do is an activity, PvP is no exception and every activity will follow the principles explained in the ZPD whether it does so intentionally or unintentionally. And  system that disregard that will eventually break.

Why do you believe that it is learning that is the causal reason of people vanishing?  People have learned the game's mechanics enough to play, it's a matter of being placed in situations that remove agency that removes their incentive to do so.  There isn't a lot required to play PvP.  And people would have enjoyment if they were placed against people of similar skill level.  Its getting in matches where you are utterly rolled because the MKO is actively competing against you, and MKO's on your team are frustrated your negatively impacting their performance.

[shion.2084]

Now if you want to Fix PvP you need to increase player base.  I've already specified numerous things that would make this more likely.

1) Different mechanics for different tiers of skill.   At noob levels have things like stability given after a CC to avoid loss of agency.  Have things like deaths be rewarded with a time limited buff on respawn so they aren't infinitely farmed.  Add mechanics to hand hold contribution.

2) Allow agency over match making.  Allow users to specify what ranger of MMR they are willing to play against and to state they'd rather not have a match if this can't be satisfied.

3) Allow players to choose if they would like to compete in a match where their opponents are in a pre-made group larger than they are in.  Ie. allow any size of group to do PvP but for players to be able to state whether they are interested in being matched against a group that's bigger than theirs.

3.5) Separate leader boards by pre-made size.

4) Encourage people to play .... Pip loss should scale based on relative result of match.  If you lost by 6 points out of 500 you shouldn't lose 14 mmr as you would normally for a match loss.

5) Reward individual contribution better .... eg. 4 top scores should negate rank loss.

6) Premade groups should use the highest MMR as each player in that groups rating in ranked... not average (avoid gaming the system by having purposefully tanked players)

7) to deal with broken classes, allow for only one class of each type to be in a game in ranked.  Or at least have a category players can select where that's the rule.

😎 Fix balance 🙂. Things like port, invuln, stealth, should come with a damage debuff so that people using them do less condi/phys damage for a short time after.  It will make these strategic choices for placement and positioning rather than a port from the other side of a wall to a 1 shot kill.  

9) Increase agency.... have less agency stealing effects, or at least clearly have indication these are going to be used and allow counters to counter.  ie. Make blocks block (but have less blocks).  Perhaps make blocks have so many charges so they can be worn down by coordinated effort.

9)  Standard Effect Models.  In a similar manner to standard character models, have a mode in PvP where actions are clearly indicated visually and straightforwardly.  If an attack is unblockable then it shows a certain common effect across all classes.  If someone has reflect up, a visual identifier indicates this. Etc.   I shouldn't have to memorise everyones individual animation down to the angle an attack is animated two swing at to understand what they are doing.

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by shion.2084

[ccccc.4963]

Who pays these people to defend gw2s matchmaker I just played with 3 supports and a core thief 

[Malus.2184]

1 hour ago, shion.2084 said:

Why do you believe that it is learning that is the causal reason of people vanishing?  People have learned the game's mechanics enough to play, it's a matter of being placed in situations that remove agency that removes their incentive to do so.  There isn't a lot required to play PvP.  And people would have enjoyment if they were placed against people of similar skill level.  Its getting in matches where you are utterly rolled because the MKO is actively competing against you, and MKO's on your team are frustrated your negatively impacting their performance.

Enough to play, yes, and there's a large difference in the difficulty of overcome ing someone when you just know enough to play compared to someone who's mastered how to play and knows the maps intricately. That increases the challenge of the activity significantly and when the challenge is so high that people feel a large gap they just quit in frustration. And "isn't a lot" is PvP easy then? What does the "isn't" cover?  Communicate it in precise language, please.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Malus.2184

[shion.2084]

5 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

Enough to play, yes, and there's a large difference in the difficulty of overcome ing someone when you just know enough to play compared to someone who's mastered how to play and knows the maps intricately. That increases the challenge of the activity significantly and when the challenge is so high that people feel a large gap they just quit in frustration. And "isn't a lot" is PvP easy then? What does the "isn't" cover?  Communicate it in precise language, please.

The claim that the issue can be strictly attributed to learning and ZDP is false.   It would be a similar issue if both players were equally knowledgable but one just much more capable in reflex and skill at implementing their knowledge and learning.   They should not be paired against each other.  What causes the loss is the mismatch in capability, but that isn't solely related to learning. 

The game would be perfectly fine if people of equal ability to get winning results were placed against each other, even if those participants did not have great knowledge of the game.  

The issue is match making.

There is a difference between having knowledge and learning of a thing, and being able to perform it.    Two boxers might be equally knowledgable and skilled, but one weighs 200lbs more than the other.  

[Malus.2184]

3 minutes ago, shion.2084 said:

The claim that the issue can be strictly attributed to learning and ZDP is false.   It would be a similar issue if both players were equally knowledgable but one just much more capable in reflex and skill at implementing their knowledge and learning.   They should not be paired against each other.  What causes the loss is the mismatch in capability, but that isn't solely related to learning. 

The game would be perfectly fine if people of equal ability to get winning results were placed against each other, even if those participants did not have great knowledge of the game.  

The issue is match making.

There is a difference between having knowledge and learning of a thing, and being able to perform it.    Two boxers might be equally knowledgable and skilled, but one weighs 200lbs more than the other.  

No, it literally would be different because then the other party would be left with a feeling that they could overcome the challenge with just a bit more effort. Humans would rather have a tight loss where they feel they gave it their everything and have a chance to grow than an easy win where they just own the competition. And you just said that getting knowledge of the game was easy, which would imply that the losing party would have that. Which one is it? Can they easily learn? Or is it too difficult to learn? Your argumentation is cognitively dissonant.

And you also never explained what the "isn't" covered. Say it without using the form of "not."

[shion.2084]

8 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

No, it literally would be different because then the other party would be left with a feeling that they could overcome the challenge with just a bit more effort. Humans would rather have a tight loss where they feel they gave it their everything and have a chance to grow than an easy win where they just own the competition. And you just said that getting knowledge of the game was easy, which would imply that the losing party would have that. Which one is it? Can they easily learn? Or is it too difficult to learn? Your argumentation is cognitively dissonant.

And you also never explained what the "isn't" covered. Say it without using the form of "not."

The aversion to playing comes from playing players who perform better than you.  This may or may not be related to knowledge as there is a difference between having learned a thing and your ability to apply it.  There is a physical component to success.   

What causes people to quit IS NOT strictly knowledge disparity, as someone with less knowledge playing the right class and having better physical capabilities can beat someone with more.   What causes people to quit is getting put in situations where they do not perceive there is any likelihood for success.  This perception can be sometimes caused by a knowledge disparity as ZPD discusses, but can arise from other factors.

[shion.2084]

I'll make it simple... would you also attribute a boxer not wanting to fight another who was in a much higher weight class an issue of ZPD.  Because on a purely physical basis this game can be the same way.  We have disabled players with use of only one hand.

[Malus.2184]

22 minutes ago, shion.2084 said:

The aversion to playing comes from playing players who perform better than you.  This may or may not be related to knowledge as there is a difference between having learned a thing and your ability to apply it.  There is a physical component to success.   

What causes people to quit IS NOT strictly knowledge disparity, as someone with less knowledge playing the right class and having better physical capabilities can beat someone with more.   What causes people to quit is getting put in situations where they do not perceive there is any likelihood for success.  This perception can be sometimes caused by a knowledge disparity as ZPD discusses, but can arise from other factors.

And that's explained in the ZPD. The aversion comes from the feeling that the challenge of defeating them is too big. Any activity has the same difficulty and other factors make it more or less difficult to perform. The skill of other players is a factor of increased difficulty in this case. There are a lot of psychological phenomenology involved in this as people will give it their own interpretation. Perhaps they just see it as them being lazy, too tired to bother, etc. It all comes down to a few abstract causes, in this case, frustration that they're unable to explain because they've learned that people should never feel frustration when confronted with these things.

How people understand things and how they're understood academically is vastly different and "common sense knowledge" has to my knowledge always been disputed when something has been properly studied.

[shion.2084]

Also ZPD doesn't matter if the reward for poor performance is significant.  Because then people don't care how they perform the task if they get benefit from it anyway.  Hence AFKers.

[shion.2084]

Ie.  I could run a completely unfair game that you have no chance of winning at.  But if there's no down side to losing, and participation garners you 10,000 dollars a game... Im betting you're going to play.  Hence participation in GW2 PvP is not solely impacted by the concept of ZPD but rather incentivization as well.

[shion.2084]

Also as a side note... this is limited thinking...
"Following Vygotsky, some educators believe that the role of education is to give children experiences that are within their zones of proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning such as skills and strategies."

As there can clearly be benefit from also giving children experiences that are within the category of things they can do unaided.  Because something I can do unaided I might still get better at and learn from my having done it.   As well it might naturally increase my my scope of things I can do un-aided.  Just because I have the capability to do something unaided if I start trying, does not mean I know how to do it before I try.  It means I can work it out unaided... and that process of working it out is perhaps the best instruction.

The theory seems.... insufficient.