We may have had say 10,000 players leave and go elsewhere since 2005. A league system is one of the things we need to reverse the negative trend in player base. It's absolutely necessary that newbies can have a safe haven so they can learn the game before being matched up against guys who long got past that, and don't even empathize with newbies problems because they forgot it nearly a decade ago.bibim wrote:Is it really realistic to think about such a league system with current spring games player bases?Cheesecan wrote:But then a better matchmaking system made up of leagues would have been better. The core of the problem is that newbies should simply not play with pros. Look to the StarCraft 2 ladder system for a proven way of handling things.
I agree that a true matchmaking system should be better though.
We tried newbie hosts, but in the end people join them due to scarcity. If you look at Starcraft 2, the engine supports perhaps 8v8 but ladder only goes up to 4v4 ranked games. This is perhaps not only due to technical reasons but also likely because there's some quality assurance thinking behind it. E.g. 2v2 waiting time is just a fraction of the waiting time for 8v8, and there are plenty more opponents to choose from. Now that's for a huuge server like b.net, and they still decided larger games would just have too long waiting times. Then why are we having 8v8? The community is too tiny for it for sure.
Add ladder play for 1v1,2v2,3v3,4v4, and mimic the hidden MMR(matchmaking ranking) system of Starcraft 2. In essence, you have a hidden MMR then you are promoted/demoted in league after the system is very sure that you will have the nearest to 50% winning chance in your new league. In effect this means players will face off with at most one level above or below them, depending on their current win streak. This goes from bronze,silver,gold,platinum,diamond,master,grandmaster so there's a clear progress incentive to advance. Meanwhile players who are terrible can comfortably face others who are terrible. Without getting humiliatingly defeated. Research says that getting really good at something takes a certain amount of hours of practice. You can't "force" skill progress in every person by having them play with their betters in every other game, like we do today. It might even be counterproductive to let newbies play with much better players. They gain bad habits from relying on hiding in a "tech spot" or whatnot and don't learn2play.
Every player should be able to go and spectate or join unranked matches with better players once in a while, but that's a whole different thing than day to day play which should be league-based if you want to retain players.
This is disregarding that you have an offset of 2500 m/one commander for each player and greater spatial dislocation and proximity to mexes. Beyond a certain point into the game, a good player could probably micro and macro all across the map better than a bunch of noobs could. So then you have a team consisting of a set number of anchors who can actually survive and face a chance of making their team win, and a bunch of liabilities in the form of noobs that are just an encumbrance that have to be monitored, really.bibim wrote:Your comparison makes little sense to me. How current player balance system could be compared to several chess players sharing same chess pieces and playing against one GM? Are you referring to the coop mode?Cheesecan wrote:Here's a thought experiment. Put five 500 ELO chess players together against one 2500 GM. Should the likelihood of any one side winning be 50%? Of course not, the GM will always win. So we then understand that ratings are not cumulative and therefore spring ratings must be flawed for >1 players. This is exactly what was done. This is why you have people shouting bloody murder and stacked teams whenever a good clan joins. This is why we have no real clans left also. Bad model.
Every player getting a commander can be both positive and negative, since newbie is likely to lose that commander to a superior enemy, simply resulting in him giving away metal to the enemy and thereby demoralizing his own team. It can also mean outright win in metagaming since you can combomb early game with little risk of losing if you have a superior number of players.
@Silentwings: I will attempt to understand this that you speak of. For sure, I am not qualified to comment on lobby matchmaking before I understand every balancing algorithm there is. How presumptuous of me to imply that matches are anything but perfectly balanced.