Make Profiles visible

[Gilmund]

Before I give my opinion I just want to ask a few questions so that I understand completely what you mean. Are you asking for a lobby system where you can create lobbies based on winrates? For example, I create a game normally, but I have an additional option there where I can put up a restriction that only players certain winrates can join my lobby, for example 50% - 75%, and now only people with that winrate can join the lobby. Did I understand this correctly?

Yes. And if you decide to limit you could only choose a winrate range if you're in that winrate range. That way you're able to have a vague idea of winrates of players joining lobbies, not bullying them cause they are too high or too low, and without perfectly knowing what is the level of the players. You never see their profiles in the process. One could have 41% winrate, the other 59% if you open a game with a 40%-60% bracket but you know both are in this 40%-60% bracket based on their ability to join your lobby.
The lowest ones could make lobbies under 40% and not being rolled over, the middle ones lobbies around 40-60% and have fair matches. Everyone could open larger brackets obviously to launch games due to lack of players. But when a game by a 80% has being opened upon a 0-80% winrate range to attract people, you know it cause you see it in the lobby and you're perfectly in the liberty to avoid it.
Of course it is additional, you could also keep making lobbies the old way without it. I imagine this system as a liberty, not an obligation. But i figure people would use it to have fair games.

Problem is if it does become a very popular setting it can segregate newbies, casual players and seasoned then create two distinct casts: the one who get to enter the game rooms and the others.
Considering the actual playerbase, in this very case, it can be disastrous.

sorry my english.

They already are put aside when they are under 30%, they are undermined in games too cause they can't keep up. It is bad experience for everyone. And obviously as many are in the 0-40% bracket and many are in the 40-60% bracket, i fear more for the best ones in that regard, the others would still be able to play between them at least.
Plus, you don't keep your 30% winrate indefinitely if you improve. And you've no interest to stay in your winrate range indefinitely. I don't know anyone keeping it up purposely under 40% or 50%, people want to win their games. And winning makes their winrate growing.
If you start winning too much on 0-40% winrate range games, you'll probly up 50% and if you're not good enough for 40-60% lobbies, go down again to find people your level again, so i figure it's no big deal.

And yes it is about private lobbies, so 10vs10 are out (we wouldn't be able to launch any 10vs10 anymore).

 

[KarampaFIN]

Yes. And if you decide to limit you could only choose a winrate range if you're in that winrate range. That way you're able to have a vague idea of winrates of players joining lobbies, not bullying them cause they are too high or too low, and without perfectly knowing what is the level of the players. You never see their profiles in the process. One could have 41% winrate, the other 59% if you open a game with a 40%-60% bracket but you know both are in this 40%-60% bracket based on their ability to join your lobby.
The lowest ones could make lobbies under 40% and not being rolled over, the middle ones lobbies around 40-60% and have fair matches. Everyone could open larger brackets obviously to launch games due to lack of players. But when a game by a 80% has being opened upon a 0-80% winrate range to attract people, you know it cause you see it in the lobby and you're perfectly in the liberty to avoid it.
Of course it is additional, you could also keep making lobbies the old way without it. I imagine this system as a liberty, not an obligation. But i figure people would use it to have fair games.

Now that is something I can support. Even if the system can be "flawed" in a way due to a new player having very low games, but might have won his so he has 100% winrate, but that can easily be fixed that you can't either join these lobbies or you can only join the under 40% ones. In general a system like this would cater to both sides, it would need to be tested but it could work.

 

[dmdelor]

That sounds good on the surface, playerbase fragmentation aside, but it's a system that fights itself. If it's working successfully, everyone it matches will trend towards a 50% win rate. As everyone trends towards a 50% win rate, everyone starts looking the same and it can't match by skill anymore.

The problem is that the system can't distinguish between a low-skill player being matched against other low-skill players and winning 50% of the time, and a high-skill player being matched against other high-skill players and winning 50% of the time. The basic idea's good, though, you just need to key on something a bit more sophisticated than win rate such as implementing an ELO.

A possible simpler-than-ELO solution, just to present something forum-reading friendly:

1) Everyone has a hidden rank from 1-5. Everyone starts at 1.

2) A lobby will accept a range of 1-2, 2-4, or 3-5.

3) After each game, the most recent 20 games a player has played are looked at. If they've got 14 wins, they go up a rank. If they've got 14 losses, they go down a rank. Win streaks get you promoted faster; after two wins in a row, the third win in a row and beyond counts as two wins for promotion purposes.

4) After promotion or demotion, your 20-match win/loss record is cleared and you start over.

Spoiler: Notes

1) Assume a "Matchmaking" yes/no pulldown in a lobby. If it's off, no restriction on who can join and no scoring towards promotion or demotion.

2) Five bins were chosen because a small playerbase means we can't support many bins. If we had enough people, you could add additional ranks easily and without resetting existing ranks. Lobby progression continues the same way; 4-6, 5-7, etc.

3) No need to manually select lobby rank in when making the lobby. If a mid-rank player creates a lobby, the server can automatically adjust the range permitted as other people join.

4) Yeah, we could get fancier and factoring in draws, team skill (say, two rank 1s vs two rank 2s), etc. However, I'm not sure it'd be beneficial and it's definitely not worth getting into that level of detail for a forum hypothetical.

All of this is, of course, just a terrible hack around everyone using matchmaking with a proper ELO in place, but consider it a compromise to the current state of everyone using custom lobbies.

 

[dmdelor]

Heh, tangentially, this discussion reminds me of a complaint I always found funny back in my Starcraft 2 days. In one forum I frequent, a periodic complaint was that Starcraft 2's (extremely good) matchmaking punished skill because no matter how good you got you'd always win about half the time.

An understandable reaction, but...

 

[Gilmund]

That sounds good on the surface, playerbase fragmentation aside, but it's a system that fights itself. If it's working successfully, everyone it matches will trend towards a 50% win rate. As everyone trends towards a 50% win rate, everyone starts looking the same and it can't match by skill anymore.

The problem is that the system can't distinguish between a low-skill player being matched against other low-skill players and winning 50% of the time, and a high-skill player being matched against other high-skill players and winning 50% of the time. The basic idea's good, though, you just need to key on something a bit more sophisticated than win rate such as implementing an ELO.

A possible simpler-than-ELO solution, just to throw a concept that's more forum-reading friendly:

1) Everyone has a hidden rank from 1-5. Everyone starts at 1.

2) A "matchmaking"-enabled lobby will accept a range of +/- one tier. If a lobby has a rank 1 player in it, it won't go over rank 2. If a lobby has a rank 3 player in it, the range is 2-4.

3) After each game, the past 20 games a player has played are looked at. If they've got 14 wins, they go up a rank. If they've got 14 losses, they go down a rank. After promotion or demotion, your 20-match win/loss record is cleared and you start over.

Assume a "Matchmaking" yes/no pulldown in a lobby. If it's off, no restriction on who can join and no scoring towards promotion or demotion.

Sure it is not perfectly representative if you think about new players growing their winrate in lower ranges and faking the stats. But i based things about winrates existing right now, you don't start from scratch except for these new players and the point is to allow a system to give more fair games to guys with often 100-200 hundred games with actual winrates meaning something about their level, who have no interest whatsoever to stomp new players under 30% and who wanna avoid being rolled over by big vets above 70%.
You would sure not automatically be forced to stay in your winrate range all the time and i expect lobby games to have large brackets and fill due to lack of players (just large enough at least to be sure you've players knowing the basics of the games or not way too good for your level). So I find this a bit exagerated. Better or lower player will not all trend to 50% winrate. And if a winrate for a 80% is surrepresentative of very low skilled players he has met, he sure will go down. But as anyone will, the one with 60% win in lower brackets will not keep it long neither. At the end a guy better than others will sure go up anyway in the big scheme of things. Remember it's harder and harder to grow your winrate the more and more games you loose. If you have lost too much in the past, you do not even gain 0.1% every new game you win and your winrate does become pretty static.

It is just meant to be indicative for private lobbies, not to create a perfect matchmaking to play only opponents of your brackets like a ranked system on the side would do.
I mean as a 80% player, i find the vast majority of players i meet are fine to play with around 50%-60%, i've this extra experience sometimes which makes me win but they are not bad overall. And some of them often give me a hard time cause their winrate is not representative for various reasons. I would agree to play with them in team. On the opposite i start having issues with people under 40% not knowing the basic mechanics and who clearly have not fun doing these games neither cause they finished rolled over.

Plus you would have 10vs10 aside or quickplay working outside this logic. It is mainly meant to avoid the big mess of private lobbies nowadays where you have enormous disparities between players even despite the fact you ask for players with a minimum exp to play with.

 

[dmdelor]

It could work in this specific case, given that we have an established playerbase that isn't growing much.

 

[Gilmund]

It could work in this specific case, given that we have an established playerbase that isn't growing much.

Of course your propositions may well be debated around improvements of the matchmatking system but mine were never intended to be used for machtmaking, they are too simple for it.