Avallo Kantor
DUST University
Ivy League
101
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Posted - 2013.06.24 22:58:00 -
[1] - Quote
To be honest OP, it's a rather rubbish argument to make, and there are several better arguments to make for not using matchmaking during the early stages for the game. (They have already said they are working on matchmaking)
I would argue that the reason no matchmaking was made in the beginning was that CCP was rather expecting a small player count, especially during beta, and decided that it would be easiest to not have matchmaking so that even with a small player base, they would have a large pool of effective players to draw upon for a match.
Consider this: If you have a player base of 1000 players, and there is no matchmaking, then at any point Player A can be matched with 999 other potential players to form one match, allowing for very short waiting times between selecting a match and getting into it.
Now if you have let's say X tiers of matchmaking, then Player A can only have 1000 / X potential players to form a match in his bracket, assuming every Tier has the exact same number of players. (which it won't.) Namely, matchmaking only causes longer queues. However if you have a large enough player base this time differential is nearly nothing, for example, if you only need say 500 players in a bracket to ensure that there will always be a near zero wait time, then match making so that no "bracket" is under 500 players would negate any slow down that would occur.
Obviously these values would be much larger, and CCP might have decided to not initially include matchmaking for that reason.
The other reason matchmaking might not have been included (and this reason is stated to have been true) is that the metric by which you decide a match can be very tricky, especially when you can rapidly equip different gear.
Do you base it by overall SP? If so then you'll still have players with higher skill stomping low skill, but long time players.
Do you base it by total WP? Same problem as above.
Do you base it by WP / Match or K/DR? If so, then you'll have the scenario where high skill players may be fighting other high skill players... in better gear. And then there's the troubling prospect (that happens in other games) where a player "nukes" their own score so that they can be matched against players who clearly are not at their level.
Assuming the main reason of matchmaking is to avoid "stomping" of any variety, then you have to be careful to not let it be metagamed (because players WILL do this) so that you still have scenarios where people can Stomp others. Skill can be a somewhat difficult thing to measure, and that's why in even other FPS games no matter how good the matchmaking you still have complete blow out matches. |