A thought that’s been nagging at me for a while.
If a game has a huge skill gap, doesn’t that mean that it’s going to take the game that much longer to find matches for players?
Assuming the ranking system works, then yes, that WOULD be a side-effect. Isn’t that basically a guaranteed effect? I don’t necessarily view it as a bad thing; I think of it as the system trying to place me with the most proper players as possible.
The ranking system determines that. The in-game skillgap does not affect that.
Why would you think that? Didn’t take long to find a match in previous Halo games, regardless of the perceived skill gap in any or all of those particular games. I would expect H4 to be no different.
The primary factor in how long it takes to find a match is how many people are playing in the playlist, not skill gap…
Yes, probably, but if Halo 4 will have a huge skill gap, it would be the most populated game of all time, so no problem.
No. Rankings are relative to the people you have played. If we were to, say, double the trueskill range in H3 (thereby making the difference between a 50 and a 40 APPEAR twice as large), all you would need to do is double the skill search range. What increasing the skill gap DOES do is make the ranking/matchmaking system more precise and accurate (thereby improving matches), while also creating a more balanced game.
This is why Halo 3’s ranking system was good. It capped off all good players at level 50, where games could still be found and the probability of getting cheated was relatively low. To differentiate the good players from the bad players at level 50, a playlist exp feature was added with TU 2 for Halo 3.
A 50 with 1000 wins on his 50 was usually distinguished as being better than a 50 with only a handful of wins on it.
> Yes, probably, but if Halo 4 will have a huge skill gap, it would be the most populated game of all time, so no problem.
That’s not a guaranteed outcome of a huge skill gap. A lot of semi-unpopular games have huge skill gaps (e.g. Super Smash Bros. Melee).
Not necessarily.
I’ll go on the assumption that you don’t know entirely what a skill gap is. A skill gap is commonly referred to as the gap between the best player in the world and the worst player in the world - the range of skill. It also can be referred as the difference between the good players and the bad/inexperienced players. I prefer the first definition.
What a large skill gap does is it means that it becomes very easy to match good players against good players in MM and vice versa. A large skill gap is often caused by a ranking system for example: I believe that 1-50 was a good true skill (good representation of skill) ranking system because it caused a large skill gap meaning that players were matched against other players of a similar ability.
Not if there’s a good enough population and that there’s a right amount of playlists.
Gameplay skill gap only separates people from each other more accurately, so that average Joe who is a “15” isn’t very likely to be better than average Jim who is “35.”
Match searching just depends on how wide it searches and who’s playing. Using the 1-50 scale, if team A averages out to be a 32, an optimal match would be against a team who’s averaged at 31-33 and an ideal match at 30-34. If done right, this means players from skills of 29-35 can play each other. If this is the case, then as long as a decent population inhabits that particular playlist, searches based on skill searching shouldn’t take much time at all.
If this game is everything it should be, then there will be enough people playing for such things to not matter.
> > Yes, probably, but if Halo 4 will have a huge skill gap, it would be the most populated game of all time, so no problem.
>
> That’s not a guaranteed outcome of a huge skill gap. A lot of semi-unpopular games have huge skill gaps (e.g. Super Smash Bros. Melee).
I’m going to go ahead and guess that SSBM is a VERY popular game.
> Why would you think that? Didn’t take long to find a match in previous Halo games, regardless of the perceived skill gap in any or all of those particular games. I would expect H4 to be no different.
Because people complained that the wait times were too long in H3.
> The primary factor in how long it takes to find a match is how many people are playing in the playlist, not skill gap…
The primary factor in how long it takes to find a match is how many people within your TrueSkill range there are.
If H4 goes back to H3 type restricted matching, you won’t get matched against the lowbies like you are now in Reach.
> > > Yes, probably, but if Halo 4 will have a huge skill gap, it would be the most populated game of all time, so no problem.
> >
> > That’s not a guaranteed outcome of a huge skill gap. A lot of semi-unpopular games have huge skill gaps (e.g. Super Smash Bros. Melee).
>
> I’m going to go ahead and guess that SSBM is a VERY popular game.
Not so much anymore, no. It was for its time. Even if it wasn’t popular, the game would still have a giant skill gap simply due to how the game works. Perhaps I don’t exactly understand how a “skill gap” works, though.
Not necessarily. Depending on how that skill gap is achieved, it’s actually likely to be less of an issue.
Reach’s problematic snowballing isn’t really an issue of large skill gap. It’s an issue of people not being able to fight back meaningfully when the game is in certain states no matter how poorly or well they’re performing relative to the other team, which in some ways has more to do with a small gunplay skill gap than anything else. (The map and vehicle design are probably just as significant issues though, especially when dealing with BTB)
Here’s a definition of a skill gap that I like to refer to: A large skill gap within the context of a game is marked by the ability of good players to beat bad players at that game consistently.
> Yes, probably, but if Halo 4 will have a huge skill gap, it would be the most populated game of all time, so no problem.
Shame it probably wont have much of a skill gap
> Here’s a definition of a skill gap that I like to refer to: A large skill gap within the context of a game is marked by the ability of good players to beat bad players at that game consistently.
I’d say that a skill gap is where the elements of a game have a learning/adapting curve to them. How big that learning curve or adapting curve is is what marks its “size.”
Some might say that this is a bad business model since people can’t just pick it up and play it (like CoD) but that’s where ranking systems and playlists come in.
What should happen in a game with a relatively high skill gap is have visible ranking (1-50 seems to be a sweet spot in the numbers because the decimals are neither too under used nor too over used in a placement) that shows where people are. The game should not be a grind, and a “50” should simply be a legitimate top tier player (which shouldn’t be based on any one stat).
> > Here’s a definition of a skill gap that I like to refer to: A large skill gap within the context of a game is marked by the ability of good players to beat bad players at that game consistently.
>
> I’d say that a skill gap is where the elements of a game have a learning/adapting curve to them. How big that learning curve or adapting curve is is what marks its “size.”
>
> Some might say that this is a bad business model since people can’t just pick it up and play it (like CoD) but that’s where ranking systems and playlists come in.
>
> What should happen in a game with a relatively high skill gap is have visible ranking (1-50 seems to be a sweet spot in the numbers because the decimals are neither too under used nor too over used in a placement) that shows where people are. The game should not be a grind, and a “50” should simply be a legitimate top tier player (which shouldn’t be based on any one stat).
Would you support an asymptotic ranking system or a system where you can reach the highest rank?
To have a huge skill gap you need a huge amount of players so all should be well.