in eve you have different security status area' s where noob player can learn to play, this works very well in eve. something similar in dust is necessary if the game is to survive the next year because the player base will keep shrinking otherwise and rightfully so as ccp alienates more and more vets with the updates that screw one group of people and award another! It would not take much to kill the game at this point. new players are not buying arum gear they are just not playing and moving onto something with a more enjoyable polished game experience worth their time. There are many other games out there and over the next year there are many long awaited big games coming out.

CCP Your actions have consequences too!

i would like to see this game succeed but it is getting harder and harder to keep playing as they are constantly screwing their player base over!.

in eve you have different security status area' s where noob player can learn to play, this works very well in eve. something similar in dust is necessary if the game is to survive the next year because the player base will keep shrinking otherwise and rightfully so as ccp alienates more and more vets with the updates that screw one group of people and award another! It would not take much to kill the game at this point. new players are not buying arum gear they are just not playing and moving onto something with a more enjoyable polished game experience worth their time. There are many other games out there and over the next year there are many long awaited big games coming out.

CCP Your actions have consequences too!

i would like to see this game succeed but it is getting harder and harder to keep playing as they are constantly screwing their player base over!.

I agree that each player should have some matchmaking metric based on their skill. I have no idea if your formula is the way to do it, but it should definitely take into account K/D, W/L, ISK efficiency, average rank at the end of match, and weighted difference from the median WP score of your team (i.e. if you get 3000 WP and the median on your team was 200, then you should be getting a major bump to your matchmaking score).

I don't think there should be tiers per-se, but the matchmaker can find groups of 32 with the closest matchmaking scores and pair them up. It should also try to make each side of the match have a fairly similar matchmaking score.

Also, there probably won't be a that noticeable of a difference until we see a significant increase in the concurrent playerbase.

[...]also why do you think that ISK efficiency should be used in matchmaking?

One thing that i could imagine would be PC funded players. They tend to use full proto regardless of the loss during a match compared to the payout because it's often not the ISK they're after in pubs.

It would make those players more likely to face each other rather than players who mostly play lower tiers due to the cost.

Wether this is an important metric for match making or not is a whole seperate matter. I happen to be sceptical of this(edit: for infantry).

Regarding the formula: Looking at table B1, specifically the whole 1 death area, since 10+ kills with one or no deaths is entirely possible for MCC or redline snipers i'm worried that high profile matches could be riddled with thales snipers, sitting in the MCC.

Vehicles are similarly biased since not dying over the course of several matches is not too unlikely, depending on the vehicle, and not very remarkable. Looking at the price of some vehicles i'd even say it's more or less mandatory without outside funding.

...Which, thinking about it, is actually another thing that ISK efficiency could tackle to represent the skill of Vehicle users more accurately.

Also why do you think that ISK efficiency should be used in matchmaking?

For one thing, it's a measure of what kinds of gear you're able to kill too. So if you're able to slay many proto fits using cheap ones, that would indicate that you're a skillful player. Conversely, if you kill large numbers of poorly fit players in while running proto but still die several times/battle that would be an indication that you're not very skilled. It's not the end-all-be-all stat, but I think it should have some weight in the overall formula.

I also think average rank should be important. In an ideal matchmaking world you would be in the top half of your match 50% of the time and the bottom half 50% of the time. That would be an indication that you're playing fairly equal opponents.

I do believe this would be a good idea. Although, I also believe that DUST's playerbase is, right now, a little too small to support something like this. The time it takes to make a match would be extended, and that's against many people's favor. This has been suggested many times before.

An alternate solution would be to roll out PvE. Or to have low level PvP missions that give little ISK rewards. These missions wouldn't catch the interest of higher skilled players, since they're using gear that is much higher in worth, they'd seek out higher payed contracts.

The playerbase has been increasing a lot the past few months though, and it would be wise to work on something like this for a later build. Also I would rather wait 3 more minutes than I do now, if there was real matchmaking, than be in low skill vs extreme try hard teams all the time for less time.

Using a player stat based system will always lead to somewhat skewed results.

What if he had a bad day at work?

Or if he decided to solo a bit?

Or if he played one match AFKing then switched to an alt for the rest of the month?

Or If he had a **** team?

I propose for better matchmaking, a skill level stat should be used to match player of similar skill levels. The monthly Personal Effectiveness value should be used for matchmaking players doing public contracts. A few reasons why Dust needs this is that it would make battles more fair, competitive, and fun.

Here's the formula:
(Warpoints/Kills/30)^(3/4) + (Kills/Deaths)^(1/2) + (Warpoints/150)^(9/10) (1-(1.5*Deaths*Price/10)^(8/10) + 1.5*sqrt(Wins/Losses) = Personal Effectiveness

AFKing
If your WPs, deaths, and kills didn't change for the match, the score will not be counted.

You can check out the spreadsheet I made it in, examples, the stats I played with, and more here.

What do you guys think?

i like the idea of separating the layer base for skill and stuff
but to maintain competitiveness i suggest

the computer checks to see if your player rating is above or below the median rating and puts you in bottom or top tier

top tier has 30% more pay(to encourage people to try and get into it)

the game doesn't tell you what tier your in

if a single squad member is top tier the squad joins top tier matches

the computer checks to see if your player rating is above or below the median rating and puts you in bottom or top tier

Way more complicated than this needs to be.

SP is simply the best factor to determine player experience and gear available. No formula, not matter how ridiculously over complicated will effectively balance player skill.

SP alone won't make every battle an exact even match, but nothing ever will, and that's what we need to stop trying to do.

What I don't like is that it doesn't feel like you are making a choice. The battle is random, I didn't choose where to go. I push a button and an algorithm picks what Scotty thinks is best. I want to feel like the choice I just made matters and matchmaking based on math doesn't feel like that. Like now I just push a button and hope the math works this time and at no time do I feel in control or that my choice included the outcome of the battle.


https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=120145&find=unread (my phone won't link) is my idea.

Doesn't seem like a bad idea as long as it could be implemented.

I think a separate section of space where anything goes is still a necessary part of this game but having a place for people who want a fair challenge to go would be great.

This depends on what type of person you are. I'm impatient, and prefer not to wait 3 minutes just to fight one match. With your suggestion, CCP should add an option for players to choose the range of skill the player will fight against.

Strict and small skill ranges = longer waits
broad skill ranges = shorter waits

how do you really think this will work with at max only around 3500 players on at a time? Thats 1000 ppl in basic or militia, 1000 in advanced and 1000 in proto with about 500ish that will swing between all three grades of eq/suits/weapons. Even then there doesn't seem like a large enough group of people that there will be options about what you are playing without 1/2 empty battles. The numbers are ofc estimated to take into varying skill levels and may not reflect the actual values.

Keep in mind also the options for 3 types of battles plus FW and PC that should not be included in this as they are special types outside of strictly PUB matches.