emceen
Recruit
Posts: 6
Karma: 6
|
Post by emceen on Mar 18, 2017 15:34:55 GMT -5
Thread title says it all. Basically now I can never play solo and always need to play with my clan to have a chance at winning. In principle getting punished for losing is fine, but getting punished for having garbage teammates is not.
Why doesn't Pixonic do a little homework and realize that ranking systems are a well-studied problem? In particular, Elo ratings are a FAR superior solution to league points than anything they've used so far. Wiki it Pixonic!
The only change to Elo that would have to be made is an adjustment that allocates points to individuals within teams. Basically, for each match the average rating of the team as a whole should be computed for both teams, and the usual Elo rating updates to the team ratings should be applied. Then the change to make this an individual rating system would be allocating the points won (or lost) by the individuals based upon some contribution to the victory (perhaps something like damage share where 50k damage is awarded for each beacon captured from neutral and 100k for each beacon captured from the opposition).
This solves all mentioned problems. Namely:
- You only win points for winning matches, and only lose points for losing them, hence no "lone wolf" players are rewarded.
- Most crucially, POINTS AWARDED OR DEDUCTED AUTOMATICALLY ADJUST TO THE LEVEL OF THE COMPETITION AND/OR TEAMMATES.
Forgive me for being a bit abrasive, but rating systems are a very well-studied problem and it appears Pixonic really didn't do its homework in this regard.
|
|
|
Post by gr3ygh05t on Mar 18, 2017 16:00:06 GMT -5
It's a team game. There is no "I " in team nor there are lone wolves in a pack. Cooperation is the name of the game. This is a step forward but is by no means perfect.
|
|
|
Post by Replicant on Mar 18, 2017 16:10:32 GMT -5
It's a team game. There is no "I " in team nor there are lone wolves in a pack. Cooperation is the name of the game. This is a step forward but is by no means perfect. calling a bunch of I's a team or a bunch of lone wolves a pack does not make it so. Emceen is spot on.
|
|
|
Post by gr3ygh05t on Mar 18, 2017 16:18:39 GMT -5
It's a team game. There is no "I " in team nor there are lone wolves in a pack. Cooperation is the name of the game. This is a step forward but is by no means perfect. calling a bunch of I's a team or a bunch of lone wolves a pack does not make it so. Emceen is spot on. Well you win and lose as a team. Or maybe you failed to notice that. Play as a team player and you might win more.
|
|
|
Post by Replicant on Mar 18, 2017 16:38:54 GMT -5
calling a bunch of I's a team or a bunch of lone wolves a pack does not make it so. Emceen is spot on. Well you win and lose as a team. Or maybe you failed to notice that. Play as a team player and you might win more. That's a lot of assumption built into two little sentences. Alternately you might recognize that even someone who wanted to be a "team player" would have difficulty when confronted with "team" mates who obviously style themselves as loners by the way they play. Team play assumes some durability to the roster and ability to communicate. You may have noticed non-squad match ups are random within the confines of the Match Maker... and communication is limited to pixle-miming with your mech. The notion that this constitutes a team in the spirit you reference is obtuse. Or maybe they just do it different in where I come from.
|
|
[AurL] Valiant
Destrier
Posts: 101
Karma: 53
Pilot name: ValiantSr
Platform: Android
Clan: Aurora Luvenis
League: Diamond
Server Region: North America
Favorite robot: Griffin
|
Post by [AurL] Valiant on Mar 18, 2017 17:20:42 GMT -5
Actually league based systems have a wide base of use too and have their own merits and ELO has it's own draw backs.
An ELO system is designed for individual (1V1 or team V team) style pay, ELO also assumes that all competing players are attempting to play to their best it has no way to deal with people intentionally gaming the system. Why are they gaming the system? Because the rewards they are after are outside of the league reward system ELO has no way to account for the ulterior motive of a player seeking a monetary reward outside of the scope of their Score/ranking. All these systems are designed assuming that the ultimate goal of everyone involved is to climb the board and reach the top spot, any person operating outside of that assumption throws a monkey wrench in things. Now as for your stated issue of "can never play solo and always need to play with my clan to have a chance at winning" your proposed ELO system doesn't fix this - as you stated points would still be allocated solely to the winners and those points would come from you too even if you had "garbage teammates" in fact if you were beat by a team with lower ranked players you would lose even more points remember ELO rewards and penalizes based on the difference in ranking. Now how do you plan to deal with the "usual ELO ratings updates" by which I assume you mean the adjusted points distribution? In an ELO match between a high rated player and a low rated player a win by the high rated player gives few points were a win by the low rated player gives many - so in your system you added up and averaged the ELO of each team then what, use that average to determine the adjusted points distribution? So let's say we do that and you are a high rated player on the losing team with lower rated players and you were beat by a team of evenly mixed individuals so we know from your system what the total points distributed should be then we have to look at where they come from so now we look at your team this is something ELO doesn't do but if we follow the logic of the system seeing you have a higher rating then other members on your team we can infer under ELO theory most of those points would come from you. This is were you proposed leaving ELO behind and going back to a predetermined merit system (like the league system does now).
Now in the current system you do lose points based on your performance - perform better you lose fewer points, if you win you are rewarded based on that too, which is exactly what you seem to be advocating a system that punishes you less if you are grouped with poor performing players (which ELO doesn't do).
So is your issue match making rather then how points are awarded? The league system attempts to group players of similar skill together and then draw from those pools first when attempting to create a match now you have to realize that this means they will sacrifice ideal matches for speed in match making (few people would be ok waiting for an hour for an ideal match not to mention the logistics of a wait like that in match making) this is an issue that plagues all online games like this, as there are no scheduled matches (like chess) you are constantly trying to create matches based on available players. Now, ELO would make matches even faster as it allows low level players to play higher level players and then attempts to adjust the reward based on the match made (though it has it's own issues when you want to provide individual ratings adjustments to members of a team as this isn't what it was designed for). So while ELO has it merits I don't see them in terms of the this game environment. Could we do better then the current system? Sure there is always room for improvement. What trade off are we willing to make between quality of matches made and speed of matches made?
If we want to really address the issues with the current match making then I suggest we remove AU from the post match rewards then adjust the points system to account for a bonus in league points for beacons etc.. rather then Au. We would then need to adjust Au cost or come up with another way to earn Au to continue to allow progression with bots and weapons.
|
|
emceen
Recruit
Posts: 6
Karma: 6
|
Post by emceen on Mar 18, 2017 18:30:26 GMT -5
Actually, Elo would address the issue of playing solo bc the penalty for losing would not be great if my team on aggregate were greatly outmatched. Likewise, if I won under this scenario, the upside in my ratings would be huge. Elo was developed precisely for this purpose. The only remaining issue is how to take the aggregate team level ratings and translate them to the individual level. I made a few suggestions above, but this indeed would have to be given some thought.
I'm not suggesting the modifications I suggested are the only way. I'm suggesting that these rating systems are a very well studied problem in the gaming world, a modification to Elo for the scenario in these 6 v 6 battles is a great start, and Pixonic has basically created their system without doing any homework. The first ratings causes problems causing the "lone wolf" players. The new ratings cause more problems in not being able to play solo missions if you're an experienced player. Had they done a bit of research, these problems could have been avoided. At the very least they can research it now and come up with a proper rating system.
|
|
|
Post by blastronaut on Mar 18, 2017 18:38:32 GMT -5
The fact that Pixo is changing league points on the fly just confirms the points system is arbitrary with little to no testing involved.
A ranking system that uses arbitrary values to reward individual contributions to winning or losing a match is NOT a REAL skill ranking and is doomed to fail.
|
|
emceen
Recruit
Posts: 6
Karma: 6
|
Post by emceen on Mar 18, 2017 18:41:41 GMT -5
|
|
emceen
Recruit
Posts: 6
Karma: 6
|
Post by emceen on Mar 18, 2017 18:42:14 GMT -5
The fact that Pixo is changing league points on the fly just confirms the points system is arbitrary with little to no testing involved. A ranking system that uses arbitrary values to reward individual contributions to winning or losing a match is NOT a REAL skill ranking and is doomed to fail. My thoughts exactly.
|
|
|
Post by lilryry on Mar 18, 2017 20:54:38 GMT -5
The fact that Pixo is changing league points on the fly just confirms the points system is arbitrary with little to no testing involved. A ranking system that uses arbitrary values to reward individual contributions to winning or losing a match is NOT a REAL skill ranking and is doomed to fail. the first week I played this game I thought it was hands down the best game I had ever played on my phone...then the new mm came out and I've watched pix take a great thing and make it progressively worse with every patch since then, great concept for a game but I swear there must be monkeys calling the shots because at this rate there won't even be a game in a year, just so 「dookie」ty
|
|
|
Post by sonofsam on Mar 18, 2017 21:29:42 GMT -5
After squadding with my gold 2-diamond clan mates for the last 2 days my win % has dropped to 58% which is the first time in weeks its been below 60.
I like the new point distribution. I turn in a 75k performance because that is what was needs to win on a regular basis. Not because I'm tanking but because I wanna win. I also get my share of top 2 damage but it's not as common. The problem was that even winning 2/3 of my matches I would go backwards when we lost a close one. Now I can actually go forward. I hope that in a week or so others figure out winning is more important than damage now and I can actually get help doing the small things that keep me from getting damage (already seeing early signs). Though playing a 7/7.5 hanger in silver 1 doesn't really make me a damage dealing machine and its gonna be even worse when I get to gold league.
|
|
|
Post by spawnreaper on Mar 18, 2017 22:42:32 GMT -5
The fact that Pixo is changing league points on the fly just confirms the points system is arbitrary with little to no testing involved. A ranking system that uses arbitrary values to reward individual contributions to winning or losing a match is NOT a REAL skill ranking and is doomed to fail. What do u mean they arnt testing fellow guinea pig?
|
|
|
Post by blastronaut on Mar 18, 2017 23:02:29 GMT -5
The fact that Pixo is changing league points on the fly just confirms the points system is arbitrary with little to no testing involved. A ranking system that uses arbitrary values to reward individual contributions to winning or losing a match is NOT a REAL skill ranking and is doomed to fail. What do u mean they arnt testing fellow guinea pig? They aren't getting any useful info out of me, I can assure you that.
|
|
|
Post by hyderier on Mar 19, 2017 1:30:53 GMT -5
It's a team game. There is no "I " in team nor there are lone wolves in a pack. Cooperation is the name of the game. This is a step forward but is by no means perfect. If only the game had some kind of team comms. And I don't mean chat, I mean something simpler... like ability to put up a signal above bot like "solo runner", "solo sniper", "supporter", "attack follower", "attack forerunner", "defending". Or maybe just "soloing", "leader", "follower". Default would be empty, and it would reset at least when a bot dies, possibly also on reaching a beacon or killing an enemy. Or maybe, alternatively, "I want to lead" toggleable indicator, and then "follow this bot" button displayed when looking at willing leader. And then getting some extra info like knowing which target the leader has locked, and always seeing distance to the leader as number, and leader seeing names and healths of followers. And then some demo videos showing how totally random strangers can use these to play as a team. There must be a thread about stuff like this somewhere here...
|
|
|
Post by hurtbot on Mar 19, 2017 11:02:29 GMT -5
It's a team game. There is no "I " in team nor there are lone wolves in a pack. Cooperation is the name of the game. This is a step forward but is by no means perfect. If only the game had some kind of team comms. And I don't mean chat, I mean something simpler... like ability to put up a signal above bot like "solo runner", "solo sniper", "supporter", "attack follower", "attack forerunner", "defending". Or maybe just "soloing", "leader", "follower". Default would be empty, and it would reset at least when a bot dies, possibly also on reaching a beacon or killing an enemy. Or maybe, alternatively, "I want to lead" toggleable indicator, and then "follow this bot" button displayed when looking at willing leader. And then getting some extra info like knowing which target the leader has locked, and always seeing distance to the leader as number, and leader seeing names and healths of followers. And then some demo videos showing how totally random strangers can use these to play as a team. There must be a thread about stuff like this somewhere here... Neat idea. I also like the idea of being able to nominate teammates for various "teamwork awards" with maybe some sort of small Ag reward attached.
|
|
|
Post by whatttupG on Mar 20, 2017 16:44:34 GMT -5
6 randoms in matching colors makes you a team, sitting on a BBQ with a slice of cheese on your head means you're a burger.
|
|
emceen
Recruit
Posts: 6
Karma: 6
|
Post by emceen on Mar 21, 2017 16:23:02 GMT -5
Not to distract from the side convs too much, but is anyone from Pixonic on this board? I think the PDF I linked would be great to look into...
|
|