DUST Search - The Solution To Prototype Stomping

Cosgar wrote:

CHICAGOCUBS4EVER wrote:

Imo the most effective way to balance matchmaking would be twofold. First, expand the academy so players arent kicked out of it til much later, like 1m wp or 5m sp or something. Also, make all players uncapped til they hit like 10m sp. This will provide everyone a fighting chance against people like me with a metric ton of sp Pirate

The academy was really a bandaid to matchmaking but I like the idea of building on it to further enhance new player experience. Raising the WP cap to 250k with the option to participate in pub/FW matches while still enrolled after 50k would help a lot. Uncapped SP until 10 would be good too as long as they get unlimited respecs while still enrolled to try out fittings and academy matches are limited to militia/standard gear. While enrolled, they get little side missions that teach them about the game from basic menu navigation to using all the different dropsuit frames and vehicles to give them an idea of what Dust 514 offers. Add in starter fits for all frame sizes, highsec, lowsec, and nullsec pub matches that restrict average meta level fittings by 5, 10, and no limit respectively and this would go a long way to make Dust a bit more forgiving for new players.

This in no way would permanently fix the issue but it'd be a step in the right direction. One of the biggest problems is that new players don't have a place in Dust aside from being cannon fodder for vets. We need something like EWAR with tackling and debuffs to give newberries a chance to be competitive without overall nerfing ourselves.

You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...


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Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1028	Posted - 2013.12.02 20:43:00 - [1] - Quote Lifetime SP is mostly indicating how old the character is. Not how much experience he has or how good the players gun game or tactics are. It also means that players that take a longer break end up with much harder opponents, despite being much worse players than when they left due to lack of practice. And think about poor IWS who has very high SP yet barely anything beyond ADV tier because he's a generalist and dumps a little SP everywhere. This was one of the first things CCP looked at and discarded for this very reason(s) months ago. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1030	Posted - 2013.12.02 21:16:00 - [2] - Quote Vinsarrow wrote: Malkai Inos wrote: Lifetime SP is mostly indicating how old the character is. Not how much experience he has or how good the players gun game or tactics are. It also means that players that take a longer break end up with much harder opponents, despite being much worse players than when they left due to lack of practice. And think about poor IWS who has very high SP yet barely anything beyond ADV tier because he's a generalist and dumps a little SP everywhere. This was one of the first things CCP looked at and discarded for this very reason(s) months ago. Lest I forget: Throwing high SP chars together means that PRO becomes the minimum to be competitive. Only PC funded players/corps can affort to run PRO in pubs with any kind of consistency. The rest will be forced to revert to STV/ADV eventually and thus gets stomped even harder than you can imagine. Maybe, but in New Eden I suspect by the time you have 10 million or so Lifetime SP & your still playing that you may have picked up a few things by then.... Muscle memory deteriorates with increasing pace, the longer you don't train it. After a month or two your aim will be pretty much as it was on your very first match. After that time you'll also have no idea what you've skilled into and why. I've had no idea what the f i was doing when I returned after early CB and I had to pretty much relearn the game. Try doing that, facing shiny PRO suits instead of the academy. Issues with generalist play styles being pretty much invalidated and vastly increased cost to stay competitive remain unadressed. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1030	Posted - 2013.12.02 21:20:00 - [3] - Quote Tch Tch wrote: Well they could use KDR and/or SP as mixed pools. Just make sure both teams get an even mix of vets, noobs and squatters. Don't separate them off just get the mix a bit more even. Snipers and Tankers have vastly increased k/d compared to most other roles. Now you'll end up seperating players by class and age. Not actual ability. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1030	Posted - 2013.12.02 21:41:00 - [4] - Quote Tch Tch wrote: Malkai Inos wrote: Tch Tch wrote: Well they could use KDR and/or SP as mixed pools. Just make sure both teams get an even mix of vets, noobs and squatters. Don't separate them off just get the mix a bit more even. Snipers and Tankers have vastly increased k/d compared to most other roles. Now you'll end up seperating players by class and age. Not actual ability. Would it really hurt to put the tankers vs each other and the snipers too. Not all the time but more evenly spread between teams. Yes it would. More than half of the vehicle tree is anti Infantry, or even infantry support, focused for a reason and snipers belong to the same battlefield as all the others aswell. This is ARDust514, not Tank514 or Sniping514 after all. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1031	Posted - 2013.12.02 22:13:00 - [5] - Quote CHICAGOCUBS4EVER wrote: Such balancing in matchmaking makes perfect sense, with 1 exception. There simply isnt a large enough playerbase to support the separation of players by ANY methods. further limiting selection of players in matches will do more harm than good at this time. Just an unfortunate fact of the state of the game This doesn't have to be an issue at all. The system can be made so that it "tries" to match players by whatever metric(s) deemed appropriate and, if it can't within "optimal" ranges, just take the next "closest" player. Even a non-perfect system is better than no system as long as the distribution of whatever metric(s) deemed appropriate is even enough. It's the useless metric(s) OP proposes that would make this kind of match making useless itself. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1034	Posted - 2013.12.02 22:39:00 - [6] - Quote Cosgar wrote: CHICAGOCUBS4EVER wrote: Imo the most effective way to balance matchmaking would be twofold. First, expand the academy so players arent kicked out of it til much later, like 1m wp or 5m sp or something. Also, make all players uncapped til they hit like 10m sp. This will provide everyone a fighting chance against people like me with a metric ton of sp The academy was really a bandaid to matchmaking but I like the idea of building on it to further enhance new player experience. Raising the WP cap to 250k with the option to participate in pub/FW matches while still enrolled after 50k would help a lot. Uncapped SP until 10 would be good too as long as they get unlimited respecs while still enrolled to try out fittings and academy matches are limited to militia/standard gear. While enrolled, they get little side missions that teach them about the game from basic menu navigation to using all the different dropsuit frames and vehicles to give them an idea of what Dust 514 offers. Add in starter fits for all frame sizes, highsec, lowsec, and nullsec pub matches that restrict average meta level fittings by 5, 10, and no limit respectively and this would go a long way to make Dust a bit more forgiving for new players. This in no way would permanently fix the issue but it'd be a step in the right direction. One of the biggest problems is that new players don't have a place in Dust aside from being cannon fodder for vets. We need something like EWAR with tackling and debuffs to give newberries a chance to be competitive without overall nerfing ourselves. A WP cap this high would definitely have to include all modes or players will simply get bored very soon. Even then giving players that much time in the academy will widen the SP/gear gap within the academy itself and thus create a lesser version of the protostomping it tries to get rid of in the first place. Handing out unlimited respecs has the massive problem of teaching them things that are simply and utterly not true for the rest of their entire career ("Go ahead. Waste your SP, it doesn't even matter") and promotes "bad habits" that have to be unlearned again. This would cause frustration and, I believe, hurt retention even more than unfair matches do. Uncapped SP has some of the above issues but to such a lesser degree that i tend to agree with this idea. More interactive tutorials are always good, but it should not be overdone. Players can and should be trusted to figure out trivial things like "throw grenades", "take cover" and "that one is the bad guy" on their own. Lastly. Adding MLT versions of everything in the game should have been done months ago. CCP: Copy standard gear from DB Lower cost by 60% Increase fitting reqs by 10-20% Release the damn stuff! It's not like the existing MLT stuff is any different. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1035	Posted - 2013.12.02 23:29:00 - [7] - Quote Karl Marx II wrote: Mobius Wyvern wrote: Yeah, and what happens if you have 15 million SP and you suck? You will now permanently be put into matches with people far better than you and thrashed over and over due to factors outside your control. So basically, it would be an even more guaranteed means of what only happens most of the time right now. You will be dying due to your opponents having more skill than you at the game and not an SP / gear advantage ... what exactly is wrong with that ? You are trying to say that because you suck at the game you should go up against players with 1/10th of your SP using militia gear so you can kill them ? How exactly is sucking at the game being a factor outside of your control .. your the one playing the game if you suck then you have complete control over that factor .. at least you are fighting people at a similar level of SP and gear access .. imagine being in your position and sucking at the game but then being put up against a squad of people with 20m SP when you only have 600k SP .. what chance does the player in this scenario have ? To think your complaining about going up v people with the same SP as you .. LMAO most new players would love to be up against people with the same SP as them So it's an issue when people are constantly put up against players that are vastly superior to them, get obliterated in the process and throw in the towel in frustration unless they just so happen to have an unusually high amount of SP, regardless of how they got it in the first place, regardles of whether it's invested in skills that are actually useful to them and regardless of whether the player is actually able to use and sustain the equipment you expect him to wield on a daily basis from that point on, which leads to the exact same dynamics, experience and effect? Is the glaring hypocrisy in this post actually intended or would you like to revisit above statement? You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...
Malkai Inos Onikanabo Brigade Caldari State 1045	Posted - 2013.12.03 21:02:00 - [8] - Quote +1 for not taking the bait and elaborating. Karl Marx II wrote: 1. You are missing the essence of why players want the matchmaking system fixed, it isn't so players who are bad at the game can have an easier time all the time they play the game.. it is so new players aren't going up against the best and most experienced players at the game as soon as they leave the academy. 2.If you have 15m SP and get slaughtered by other people with 15m SP why should you get put against players who have less SP ? You're basically saying that because you suck you need to be put up against people in Militia Gear when your using Proto/ADV gear so you can get kills and do well ! That is exactly why people want the matchmaking system fixed in the first place lol .. WE WANT PLAYER SKILL AND TEAMWORK TO BE THE DETERMINING FACTOR how exactly is giving you an advantage over players with less SP beneficial ? It may benefit you but it doesn't benefit the people you get put up against ! After reading this i'm actually certain that I got the essence of why you (there are certainly others that think like that but i don't believe it's everyone) want the matchmaking system fixed and from your post I can understand why this is how you would do it. I just strongly disagree with this being the objective of a matchmaking system. As I've said, there are several reasons for why having high SP does not always translate to a performance that is competitive enough to allow reasonably balanced matches. I don't think that one group of players is more deserving of allowing them to play against similarly strong opponents than the other in general. All players should have a venue where they can count on getting a challenging, yet fun and potentially rewarding fight. I think that this venue are pubs and that this is the task that a matchmaking system ought to fulfill by putting an even distribution of different skill, SP and gear levels into each team. It should be holistic and not dependant on any individual factor of any individual player, but on the combined power of each team, so that everyone can focus on fulfilling his role on the battlefield and everyone gets a chance contribute to the match, regardless of his personal position within the spectrum. No one should be forced into a perpetual circle of matches where, for whatever reason, he has no chance to compete with the rest of both his team and the oppents team. Karl Marx II wrote: 3.If you have used your 15m SP sporadically and put it in a wide variety of skills then you will obviously be weaker than someone who specialised ther skills into 1 role .. although you will have a more diverse selection of fits .. but don;t forget that YOU are solely responsible for where you invested your SP and are therefore again responsible for having weaker fittings. This is a solid point and I agree if we are talking about PC and partially FW. But, just looking at current PC paradigms we can conclude that 15m SP spread out does not yield competitive performance against 15m SP focused. Not in any individual engagement (this works as intended) and not on a wider scope (this is a problem). I'd like to stress that "generalist approach" does not equal "dumping SP into every useless thing one probably can't/won't use properly anyway" just to clear on the definitions. As it stands, the up-sides of generalizing do not balance out the downsides. A generalist approach does not work well right now, and would work even less with a SP facused MM system, making a theoratically valid and viable approach to skilling a death trap for everyone going that route. I'd say that this might be a whole seperate issue that deserves its own thread, but its consequences are a part of this problem aswell. Karl Marx II wrote: 4.As I have posted in an earlier comment .. it isn't just matchmaking that needs fixing, PVE needs adding as well therefore if you were losing alot in PVP and wanted to do something different to maybe earn ISK and SP or just improve your game then you could do PVE instead ! Full agreement here. PVE can not come soon enough for so many reasons. I just don't think we'll see anything of the sorts for quite some time and therefore getting the match making right in the mean time is important. You can take a benign object, -you can take a cheeseburger and deconstruct it to its source...