Except that it’s not really embracing the concept of a “fair go” is it?
If we consider Mint Slice to be in the top 1% of players (extremely conservative)… then how do all our little “Aussie Battlers” out there fare in a world of random match making?
Well. For someone as good as Mintie, 96% of his matches will be against players ranked lower than him (4v4). All averaged out to Platinum 6. That’s a lot of extra streamable content.
3.9% of his games will have one opponent matching his mad skills. So he may have to work a bit harder there.
And then of course, he may have to take his turn at being stomped in that massive 0.06% of games that have two or more opponents of matching traits.
Provide any evidence becides Josh Menkes GDC talk that true skill 2 actually serves to retain players, along with some explanation of why 95% of the steam player base is gone, and I’m happy to treat this as a valid argument.
If social matchmaking were purely random, you would expect to see a top 1% player in less than 7% of your 4v4 games (and if it were truly random, they’d be on your team 3/7 of that), and in only 20% of your 12v12 games (and they’d be on your team 11/23 of that).
It takes some serious imagination to believe that’s a problem.
Neither is it for 343, all they want is money and its evident by the fact they ignored issues like no maps, gamemodes, a fix for desync, and they keep adding more gamebreaking bugs.
With how many good, stable, and content rich games on the market, there’s no reason to stick with this dying corpse of a game.
ah yes a game needs strict sbmm to keep players playing or else it dies oh whats that reach had a decent playerbase years after it stopped getting support nah that’s impossible it didn’t have strict sbmm
As someone who played reach even after halo 5 was released games don’t need strict sbmm to keep its players its the content thats in the game that keeps its playerbase
Heck if mcc never got fixed and 343 never gave us infinite a lot of us would still be playing og reach to this day if the servers didn’t get shut down
It’s been mentioned in other talks. And by other developers. I think someone on this (or a similar thread) mentioned the developers of Doom?
And a quick google brought up a few quotes from various developers; In general though, you want to keep your casual players happy though, because they’re the ones who supply almost the entirety of all your sales. And in the case of a PvP skill based matchmaking game, that means making them feel like it’s skill when they win, but luck when they lose. Which skill based matchmaking causes exactly that skewed perspective in them, so that’s exactly what you want.
As for the 95% of steam player base - meh. It’s just as pointless for me to defend the loss vs SBMM as it is for you to try and blame it.
Not as hard to imagine as you think.
The example I gave was for Mint. Top 1% or if not higher. You can see the same trend if you expand it out to 3% (Onyx). Or top 15% (Diamond or higher). They will smash it out of the park at the expense of average to lower players.
Then you mirror the experience for someone on the left hand of the curve. This is the lower skill base. The casuals. And importantly, the new players. It’s not just that they see a Mintie in 7% of their games (which will a thumping) - it’s that in approaching 9/10 games they are the play thing for other’s to toy with.
I really don’t get what is wrong with having close and competitive games? Surely that is the easiest way to provide “fun” for everyone.
I do not blame the current SBMM for the drop in players. I would blame a bunch of other things before I blame SBMM for that. However, the drop in players, combined with Halo 5’s inability to maintain a large playerbase, seems to conclusively debunk the talking heads at GDC who argue that True Skill 2 helps improve player retention.
I suspect that there is a certain kind of player TrueSkill 2 helps retain - the new/very bad player who is also prone to immediately quit a game if they perform poorly. But what portion of Halo’s player base is that? A huge number of Halo players are familiar with the game. Many players who are bad will be motivated to get better.
But why is this a problem? Hasn’t a top 1% player earned the right in unranked games to perform like a top 1% player? A top 50% player is hardly ever going to come across someone like that… only once in 25-30 games will they have to play against a top 1% player in 4v4. How can that possibly be considered such a huge problem? And once in 25-30 games they’ll get to encounter a bottom 1% player and stomp all over them… the average player over time that they would encounter would be bell curve middle 50%.
Why is it a problem to have large variability in game experience in an unranked mode? Especially when some of the unranked modes are by design completely uncompetitive and silly like Fiesta? As per the above, I think the “player retention” argument is specious at best.
And I don’t necessarily think that a pure randomness is the solution. For example, I do not think a party of four top 5% players should be allowed into a purely random matchmaking queue in social. But I do think the current system is both bad (one global MMR for everything) and extremely overtuned in social trying to force 50% winrates and “close” games for all skill levels.
But weren’t you literally blaming it for doing just that when you challenged me to prove it wasn’t?
It doesn’t do anything of the sort.
As you said there are a bunch of other factors - all of which contribute to different extents.
All we can focus on is how much SBMM vs random affects player retention. And the evidence (in what is being said by the developers) suggests that SBMM > random MM in terms of player retention.
Not from my point of view.
And it’s interesting we already have one high level player here who regularly posts that it’s not their wish to.
And someone suggested MCC does matching better - but when I searched waypoint for MCC and SBMM literally the first post was from someone saying how boring it was stomping everyone. All the time.
Cleary, it’s not universal.
Again, that is for a Mintie. The less than 1%.
If you push it out to an Onyx player (who is going to stomp pretty hard) it’s 1 in 10 games. And more than 1 in 3 for Diamond plus. That’s bad for an average player. It’s brutal for a Silver / Bronze player.
Why is it a problem to have relatively close and even matches. Isn’t that more fun than stomp fests?
We may be an outlier but within my Halo group we’ve found that Fiesta is the hardest game to balance. The Diamond / Onyx players dominate because they dominate with the power weapons (both in terms of damage and retaining them) and they have the ability to hold their own with the weaker ones.
I don’t think Fiesta is a good poster child for abandoning SBMM.
Over even two top 5% players. That alone is a recipe for steaktaculars.
No, I just think that there is no merit to any argument that goes something like “This implementation of True Skill 2 is good because it improves player retention”
If I develop a drug that, in clinical trials, cures a disease, but then that drug does not in fact cure any disease when it is released into the general public, the drug does not actually accomplish its intended purpose, rather or not other external factors are the primary reason for the failure.
Again, the average player you play will wind up being smack dab middle 50%. You will get to play against bronze and silver players as much as against diamond and onyx players. You are attempting to argue against particular potential experiences that a person might have and might react badly to, but you aren’t addressing the fundamental question in this debate - Why is variation in experience bad in unranked game modes?
Ranked game modes have historically (pre- Halo 5) served to be the “control” for skill based matchmaking. If you are bronze 1 and want competitive 50/50 matches, something approximating that is available to you.
I think it’s a pretty good case (one of several) for abandoning the current one-global-MMR-to-rule-them-all-in-every-list SBMM.
It’s obvious you think it’s fun, but it also appears that you cannot comprehend why others do not think it’s fun.
There is a fundamental philosophical assumption behind your argument - every player, regardless of their skill, should have basically the same kind of experience in the game, at all times. I don’t agree that is fun at all.
I believe this assumption fundamentally removes a significant piece of the incentive to get better at the game, because the game actively tries to not reward players at the higher end of the skill curve in terms of their gameplay experience. I’d argue that in some cases it actively punishes players for being good, such as when it decides to put three absolutely awful teammates on your team to make the game’s final score “close”.
I do understand that there are times when 50% winrates and nail biter games are fun. That’s always been the goal of ranked playlists. I do not want to see that changed in any meaningful way (although I do think it would be much better if it were to match based on CSR instead of a hidden global MMR affected by everything).
However, I believe that providing a much greater variety of experience in the social, unranked playlists - one that better approximates a “random” sampling of the population - provides something of great value and fun for the game, that has been sorely missing since Halo 4.
I also don’t agree with the assumption that it’s bad for a lesser player to get stomped by a better player. If theater mode worked correctly, that provides a really great learning opportunity for the worse player that they would never have if the matchmaking is as it currently is. For example, on launch day, I got to play against Mikwen one game in the ranked list, because there hadn’t been enough time for him to separate out from the rest of the pack climbing from Diamond to Onyx. It was absolutely fascinating, even though I got absolutely dumped on for the entire game and felt like I was a helpless Bronze. But even with the broken state of theater, I got to go back and watch what he did, and I got to learn and improve as a result.
I think that the current system only benefits players who cannot emotionally handle getting dumped on by a much superior player, and who would consider quitting the game if that ever happened.
Ok. Except that the people who are saying it are the ones who actually have the data at their fingertips.
No. You would go back over the clinical trial - examining the thousands, if not millions, of data points, and look for what correlations (and their strengths) that you missed.
If you have something that clearly improves player retention, even to a relatively small extent, you don’t drop it. That would just be making the problem worse?
That is true. They will definitely have the “fairest” experience.
Variation is bad if people have different experiences.
We can clearly show that those to the left of the curve are having the opposite experience to the right of the curve.
That’s not fair.
And as someone pretty much in the middle of the curve - I don’t want to be stomped… or to be stomping. What is the point of that?
Not sure how?
Games like Fiesta actually increase the skill gap.
I have no chance taking down Mint Blitz if he has a rocket launcher and I have a pistol. Zero. And sadly, if the tables were turned and I had the rocket launcher, I doubt the outcome would be much different.
And do we have any proof of this “one global MMR to rule them all”. I see it discussed a lot - but it kind of goes against how TrueSkill2 would normally be implemented. And it certainly wasn’t like that in Halo 5.
Besides, I’ve been keeping a close eye on how ranked works each Wednesday (after spending Tuesday nights horsing around with mates in BTM and other social games). I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference. And I’ve started a spreadsheet for the average MMR of my opponents - and with the small sample size I have to date it looks pretty consistent.
Fun is in the eye of the beholder.
I can see why it would be fun to the top third, running around and showing off. Chalking up multi-kills. It’s not my cup of tea - but I can see the attraction. And maybe I’m just jealous.
I can kind of see why it could be fun for the middlers. Again, I wouldn’t like the stompings (in either direction) - but overall, OK.
But I’m yet to see how it would be fun for the bottom third. Smashing after smashing after smashing. All we need is the calls of “get gud or get out”.
Oh wait… you did. Just much more eloquently than most.
One of things I found interesting while doing a bit of googling about SBMM was this quote from a developer…
It seems to fit my personal bias in stereotyping those who are anti-SBMM as OG Halo fans who worship H3, hate advanced movement mechanics, are infuriated by coatings, and stubbornly refuse to spend any money on microtransactions.
Maybe it’s not so much that SBMM improves player retention… but that SBMM improves player spending.
I’m simply showing you that in fact the “good players” don’t enjoy SBMM.
But his video gives good rounded reasoning why it is in everyones interest to not want SBMM for social playlists.
youtube.com/watch?v=F9qMkK3wLhA
If you watch the video he tells you about how the original creation of the “TrueSkill SBMM” is not the result that the developer wanted to make. But was forced into it.
I realize what the title of this thread is. But just because I disagree with the current implementation of SBMM, doesn’t particularly mean I want it gone entirely.
We are simply saying that Social vs Ranked makes little difference. What is the point of having Ranked or Social if they play the same. In fact I find social sweatier.
I don’t disagree with team balancing as SBMM. However I want them to balance a team with a larger pool.
Lets say you scale as a level 35/50 in MMR. I want the game to compose matches that vary from 25 → 45 instead of 33 ->37.
I think that the teams still need balancing however. So if you are in a fireteam of 4 players all with MMR > 45/50 then yes you should be matched with people of similar skill… However if you are going in solo I want to be the player that potentially carries one game… then gets carried the next… Variety!!
But no I’m not suggesting that the game just match 4x 50 MMR players with 4x 15 MMR players “randomly”. (No one has said they want random).
this is what I believe most people are trying to explain here. We want balanced teams… not narrow skill margins that equal constant sweat.
This means that ol mate minty will be carrying most games due to being high skill bracket. But he will actually find games locally with a team MMR balance that looks like.
RED: 50, 33, 27,20
BLUE: 45, 43, 39. 33
Anyways… regardless this is what MCC is doing right now. And that is why I will continue to play MCC over infinite or halo 5 (as well as some other reasons relating to low population pools in Aus).
I pose my question to you then. How would you describe the difference of social vs ranked?
Other than simply saying you get ranked in ranked. Do you agree that social and ranked basically play the same? When social in it’s definition is to be social… casual… relaxed.
Like playing leagued sports vs backyard sports… You can very easily get stomped playing sports socially… and still have fun! It’s also how you get better.
If you are getting stomped hard in social then go play ranked… It’s what I did when I sucked at Halo 2.
Combined with the fact that there is little to differentiate Ranked vs Social in terms of structure. It’s essentially the same maps, lay outs, and rules. It’s no wonder games mimic rank when the heat is on.
Personally I think this would just makes things worse.
We know that wide range of ranks tends to break match making in ranked. And can even be manipulated by carefully constructed squads to milk CSR.
And you automatically think it makes it easier for the lower ranked players to compete. No, the are just appetisers for the good players on their way to fighting each other.
You get away with larger ranges for BTB. But in a 4v4 it starts to break down.
Which is what we all want. Ranked matched on a single player. Social matched on teams (but for reasons above it has to be moderate ranges).
Personally I would revamp Social entirely. Move away from mimicking what is happening in Ranked. Different weapons. Different game types. Some degree of handicapping to level the playing field.
Something different.
Again. It’s a mindset. I’m not very good but I sweat my -Yoink!- off in ranked. Try to get every last inch out of my (limited) ability.
In social I muck around. Try new weapons. Go for spectacular kills. The fun stuff.
I don’t really care about the result.
But some people just can’t let go. If their team isn’t winning they feel compelled to switch into ranked mode and carry their team hard (and then proceed to whinge about it for hours on end).
Fair enough. I obviously can’t counter you saying that is your state of mind. However, in terms of it being “functional” see halo MCC. Halo MCC operates on this principle any I couldn’t be happier about it. For one I can actually get low ping games. (which I admit is a huge reason why I am passionate about social being social)
In terms of being appetizers… I agree that if you are like MMR 3/50 then yeah that’s a tough gig. That was me in Halo 2. I was still learning how to use two sticks on a controller having just moved on from n64. But that is why I played ranked. So that I would be matched tighter.
As someone who lives in a low pop area and therefore has shared a lobby with mint blitz many times and has gotten stomped, I would still choose that variety any day over game after game that plays the exact same. I suppose with the right frame of mind my morning commute could be enjoyable.
