32 replies to this topic

[capnjosh]

This afternoon we launched some Matchmaker changes to the PC platform that should improve the experience of getting into games.  And if it doesn't, then we have a bunch more knobs and dials to improve it, and we have a ton more data points we've added to the telemetry, so we can better spot exactly where the problem is.

 

This update also puts into play an improved way of hosting our back end services that will pay off over time.  And, yes, this update will be rolled out to the console platforms sometime in the next few weeks.

 

 

 

Here is a quick list on some of the behaviors you should see while trying to join games:

 

- There is now a High-skill tier, meaning you should be able to always join a match when you are at or above that MMR threshold at any time.  The matchmaker will take a stab at putting you in the closest-possible game first though.  Right now, it's set at 1750 MMR, so let us know what you think it *really* should be ;)

 

- Players above 1380 should never be matched to servers below 1270.  Hoping to protect our brand new players with this one ;)

 

- Generally, low-skill players should be able to join higher-skill servers via the server browser, but higher-skill players will generally not be able to join low-skill servers via the server browser, except for BotsTDM.  Chime in on this topic.

 

- "Region expansion" - The matchmaker will start to look at surrounding regions' games if there are no available matches in your selected region.  After "too long", it will consider matches worldwide.  I expect this to be something we will modify and tune, so be sure to post your experiences and opinions.

 

- If you have been waiting "too long" to join a game mode that requires some minimum threshold of players to be present, the matchmaker is now willing to seed a new server with you as the first pilot.  I can see some opportunity for this to have some negative consequences, so be sure to mention anything exceptionally distasteful.

 

- BotsTDM has been added to the mix for the "Any Game Mode" selection.

 

 

 

We hope these changes will help alleviate problems associated with low-CCU conditions since the matchmaker will now actually consider surrounding skills and regions.  Additionally, given the new hosting structure, we should be able to roll out updates to the matchmaking code a lot more easily, so there's that ;)

 

We've got our telemetry page up and we'll be reviewing it as more data comes in, so along with your feedback and experiences,  we'll be able to make ongoing improvements.

 

 

still alive

-capnjosh

[crockrocket]

On the whole this sounds good, but my concern is that the playerbase is not currently large enough to handle this. Additionally I would say make locking go both ways if you are going to have it at all (I'm still against having MMR based server locks but whatever). High tier lobbies can be ruined by low tier players too.

If anything I would recommend postponing these changes until relaunch.

[EM1O]

ah. that may explain the server bloops around 1800est. thanks guys.

[capnjosh]

ah. that may explain the server bloops around 1800est. thanks guys.

 

Yeah, that was a missed security group update.  Bleh.

[DingdongJR]

still alive

-capnjosh

 

 

Arise capnjosh, your game needs you. 

 

(Additional content to stop me violating rule 2B.)

 

- If you have been waiting "too long" to join a game mode that requires some minimum threshold of players to be present, the matchmaker is now willing to seed a new server with you as the first pilot.  I can see some opportunity for this to have some negative consequences, so be sure to mention anything exceptionally distasteful.

 

I am very pleased with this. Perhaps I can finally start some Siege games on my own, as no one seems to play them. 

Edited by DingdongJR, 04 January 2017 - 07:01 PM.

[Acguy]

Nice avatar.

 

My two cents are that you just need to keep people who're 1700-1800ish or up from playing against new players. That was about where I started feeling like I could pubstomp if noone was there to out-stomp me. After a little under a week of binging I hit 1900, but I started trying out things on console so I kinda slowed down.

 

In spite of the fact that the last game I really sunk time into with a joystick was halo reach, I was able to stomp console games after about an hour of practice, and could probably count the players on that server who were objectively better than me on one hand. Console players are typically far, far worse at the game and probably need their own tiering system. As someone who feels average on PC, I feel like I'm at least a gatekeeper for the top tier on console, if not somewhere in the middle of it. My KD is double on there and my winrate closer to two-thirds instead of just half like on PC.

 

For co-op modes you should reverse your matchmaking philosophy so that low skill players are kept out of high skill lobbies, while high skill players can enter low skill lobbies. That way good players can avoid new teammates if they want, but still have the option to carry. Probably not a big deal for TDM, but semi-important for the waves mode. There should be fewer high-skill-only lobbies than anything-goes lobbies though.

[007eleven]

How do I check MMR again?

[SS396]

- There is now a High-skill tier, meaning you should be able to always join a match when you are at or above that MMR threshold at any time.  The matchmaker will take a stab at putting you in the closest-possible game first though.  Right now, it's set at 1750 MMR, so let us know what you think it *really* should be ;)

I'd like a little more explanation on how this new tier is different than the system it replaced. I thought the old system always placed a 2000+ player in the closest possible game, instead of just failing with an error like it used to (back in the ADH days).

I still wish for the return of lobbies without a 1000 MMR spread though, those were the best days of Hawken.

[Acguy]

How do I check MMR again?

 

Say "!mmr" to the scrimbot, you need to add it as a friend in game

[Sriracha_Sauce]

Say "!mmr" to the scrimbot, you need to add it as a friend in game

You can also log in to an old build of hawken when mmr was still public and grab the mmr number, pretty sure I saw that in a vid somewhere

Edited by Sriracha_Sauce, 04 January 2017 - 07:33 PM.

[Merl61]

IMPOSTER! YOU CAN'T FOOL US.

[ArchMech]

this is RLD:
https://www.facebook...154230578039422
 

then we have a bunch more POWERED knobs and dials to improve it

ftfy

*checked you fuzzy bunny, wasnt plugged in, ftfy2

Edited by ArchMech, 05 January 2017 - 01:13 AM.

[nepacaka]

Edited by nepacaka, 05 January 2017 - 12:57 AM.

[6ixxer]

This is good to have progress, even if its not immediately better, you need to break a lot of eggs to work out how everyone likes their omelette.

Now is the time to go crazy to see what works while you're still cooking for family, so to speak, rather than telling the world you are worth another look, and then serving them bad eggs.

One thing it would be good to know, is if you are changing the 3 stars method of indicating lobby skill, cos it is not clear. Not granular and it could be lower or higher.
Imo, 6 bars indicating mmr brackets would be more intuitive.
<1350, 1350-1550, 1550-1750, 1750-1950, 1950-2150, 2150+ etc
They could be bronze, double-bronze, silver, double-silver, gold, double-gold?
Chose metallic basis as they are almost universally understood, and seems nicer than green to red.

[William_Adama]

nice, I can join more games unlike before the update but for the love of god servers/optimization are a joke bazaar and last eco are unplayable plus hit reg is utterly annoying cant even play for 3 matches without going bug eyed with the poor frame rate mostly on bazaar and last eco. I hope the new what ever that comes will solve that issue.

[ArchMech]

are almost universally understood

i.....i not taking that bet
 

One thing it would be good to know, is if you are changing the 3 stars method of indicating lobby skill, cos it is not clear

its my understanding, at one point in time, it actually displayed mmr values?
that is what you will return it to *waves hand, influences the force*

 

with herokuapp and scrimbot, those of your playerbase that stuck around clearly displayed the direction they'd like the game to go in in this regard, and otherwise is a major inconvenience

Edited by ArchMech, 05 January 2017 - 01:45 AM.

[Sriracha_Sauce]

This is good to have progress, even if its not immediately better, you need to break a lot of eggs to work out how everyone likes their omelette.

Now is the time to go crazy to see what works while you're still cooking for family, so to speak, rather than telling the world you are worth another look, and then serving them bad eggs.

One thing it would be good to know, is if you are changing the 3 stars method of indicating lobby skill, cos it is not clear. Not granular and it could be lower or higher.
Imo, 6 bars indicating mmr brackets would be more intuitive.
<1350, 1350-1550, 1550-1750, 1750-1950, 1950-2150, 2150+ etc
They could be bronze, double-bronze, silver, double-silver, gold, double-gold?
Chose metallic basis as they are almost universally understood, and seems nicer than green to red.

The system works, it's just not clear what stars mean. I do like it, just needs tweaking. Your fix also kind of defeats the purpose of hiding MMR from the player even if we can see it with Scrimbot by letting the player know what bracket they're in, and therefore what MMR range they're in.

Edited by Sriracha_Sauce, 05 January 2017 - 02:34 AM.

[Onstrava]

There one very very very..Very small problem with all this and it's quite clear when you try do match making now and join any game. The game connects you to any country....yes I said ANY COUNTRY. So expect your ping to be ridiculous if not, making the match simply unplayable at times. Example: I live in the US, so I naturally want to connect to...you guessed it, the US. But the matchmaking is sending me to Russia, EU....Africa? My internet is good I'm and used to leading my shots since that's all the G2R is (lead the shot heaven), but I can't play on these servers, the ping is too high, I can't hit anything. I'm better off not moving at all and shooting, even then I might barely scratch the target. I'm hoping that this is just a small kink in the overall process of mmr adjustments. Bug maybe?

Edited by Onstrava, 05 January 2017 - 03:30 AM.

[Siamenis]

There one very very very..Very small problem with all this and it's quite clear when you try do match making now and join any game. The game connects you to any country....yes I said ANY COUNTRY. So expect your ping to be ridiculous if not, making the match simply unplayable at times. Example: I live in the US, so I naturally want to connect to...you guessed it, the US. But the matchmaking is sending me to Russia, EU....Africa? My internet is good I'm and used to leading my shots since that's all the G2R is (lead the shot heaven), but I can't play on these servers, the ping is too high, I can't hit anything. I'm better off not moving at all and shooting, even then I might barely scratch the target. I'm hoping that this is just a small kink in the overall process of mmr adjustments. Bug maybe?

 

 

- "Region expansion" - The matchmaker will start to look at surrounding regions' games if there are no available matches in your selected region.  After "too long", it will consider matches worldwide.  I expect this to be something we will modify and tune, so be sure to post your experiences and opinions.

[Onstrava]

 

Yes I saw that, so here the problem. I see servers available in the US that are 2 out of 3 star and instead of the matchmaking sending me there. It sends me to Asia, then EU and repeats. While people from EU are getting sent the US. I had a recent match where everybody but me was 200+ ping, I was at 30 and someone literally had the highest ping I've ever seen, 989 ping, I wish I was kidding on that but I'm not. I have to manually pick the US servers now since it keeps sending me for more tours over seas. I'm an American, Fuzzybunny, there is no other place I belong!!

[Sriracha_Sauce]

300 ping matches are fun for a few matches but the challenge of carrying fuzzy bunny matches at that ping gets tiring

In a game where ping mattered less this might work but this game seems to be heavily ping reliant for good player performance and even then our experience still sucks

So basically it takes it from bad to worse

[WmMoneyFrmMissouri]

Falling forward is still forward progress. Thanks for the update.

[wischatesjesus]

I think the region expansion thing should exist in the form of a popup that says something like "No good matches were found in your region. Search in other regions? (Yes)/(No)".

 

How did you come up with 1750 as the cutoff number for high skill? Is it based on any particular data or is it just a best-guess starting number?

[nepacaka]

I think the region expansion thing should exist in the form of a popup that says something like "No good matches were found in your region. Search in other regions? (Yes)/(No)".

And play on USA or Asia with 150-250 ping instead 50 on EU? No thanks :3

[capnjosh]

 

 

Arise capnjosh, your game needs you. 

 

(Additional content to stop me violating rule 2B.)

 

 

I am very pleased with this. Perhaps I can finally start some Siege games on my own, as no one seems to play them. 

 

 

This has been a long-standing hole in the matchmaker.  Essentially, it was always willing to let a player sit in the queue for the max time and eventually see "there were no servers... sorry".

[capnjosh]

I'd like a little more explanation on how this new tier is different than the system it replaced. I thought the old system always placed a 2000+ player in the closest possible game, instead of just failing with an error like it used to (back in the ADH days).

I still wish for the return of lobbies without a 1000 MMR spread though, those were the best days of Hawken.

 

The previous instantiation suffered from a global fluidity of skill rating tolerance, that is, every player's matchmaking request was run through the same slowly-growing skill rating expansion algorithm every time.  Since there was no hard restriction on high-skill players joining low-kill servers, it was possible, and given low server populations it became inevitable.  Therefore, there was more mixing than would be preferable.

 

The new system has 2 actual hard cutoffs: a hard segregation that restricts players above a certain mmr from ever playing with players below a certain threshold, and another that says "everyone above this threshold is in 'high-skill land', so, matchmaker, do one round where you try to match them to the closest-possible thing you can find, but after that just look at all available servers that are in 'high-skill land'".

 

Right now, the hard segregation cutoffs are that no player above 1380 can play on a server that's below 1270.  I can see a case for just upping that to something higher.  Would you be interested in seeing how things played out with it set to 1380 and 1500?

 

The second threshold - the one for "high-skill land" is set at 1750 right now.

[capnjosh]

Nice avatar.

 

My two cents are that you just need to keep people who're 1700-1800ish or up from playing against new players. That was about where I started feeling like I could pubstomp if noone was there to out-stomp me. After a little under a week of binging I hit 1900, but I started trying out things on console so I kinda slowed down.

 

In spite of the fact that the last game I really sunk time into with a joystick was halo reach, I was able to stomp console games after about an hour of practice, and could probably count the players on that server who were objectively better than me on one hand. Console players are typically far, far worse at the game and probably need their own tiering system. As someone who feels average on PC, I feel like I'm at least a gatekeeper for the top tier on console, if not somewhere in the middle of it. My KD is double on there and my winrate closer to two-thirds instead of just half like on PC.

 

For co-op modes you should reverse your matchmaking philosophy so that low skill players are kept out of high skill lobbies, while high skill players can enter low skill lobbies. That way good players can avoid new teammates if they want, but still have the option to carry. Probably not a big deal for TDM, but semi-important for the waves mode. There should be fewer high-skill-only lobbies than anything-goes lobbies though.

 

"My two cents are that you just need to keep people who're 1700-1800ish or up from playing against new players."

 

As I alluded to in my reply to ss396, I suspect this might be the best-possible thing.  Right now the hard cutoff is no players above 1380 can play with players below 1270, and then above that is the slightly fuzzier threshold of "high-skill land" where it should be easier and faster for players above 1750 to get matches together.

[capnjosh]

IMPOSTER! YOU CAN'T FOOL US.

 

The world is changing.  Ancient things are arising and coming forth with great vigor :)

[capnjosh]

This is good to have progress, even if its not immediately better, you need to break a lot of eggs to work out how everyone likes their omelette.

Now is the time to go crazy to see what works while you're still cooking for family, so to speak, rather than telling the world you are worth another look, and then serving them bad eggs.

One thing it would be good to know, is if you are changing the 3 stars method of indicating lobby skill, cos it is not clear. Not granular and it could be lower or higher.
Imo, 6 bars indicating mmr brackets would be more intuitive.
<1350, 1350-1550, 1550-1750, 1750-1950, 1950-2150, 2150+ etc
They could be bronze, double-bronze, silver, double-silver, gold, double-gold?
Chose metallic basis as they are almost universally understood, and seems nicer than green to red.

 

The goal for the future is to create a new ranking system somewhat like what you're proposing.  Right now, as you recommend, I want to find out what works, so that when the ranking systems come in they have been informed by what, well, actually works.

[capnjosh]

i.....i not taking that bet
 

its my understanding, at one point in time, it actually displayed mmr values?
that is what you will return it to *waves hand, influences the force*

 

with herokuapp and scrimbot, those of your playerbase that stuck around clearly displayed the direction they'd like the game to go in in this regard, and otherwise is a major inconvenience

 

Yeah, the intent now is to get ranked mode systems in.  It's on the roadmap for the next 2 updates in fact.

[capnjosh]

There one very very very..Very small problem with all this and it's quite clear when you try do match making now and join any game. The game connects you to any country....yes I said ANY COUNTRY. So expect your ping to be ridiculous if not, making the match simply unplayable at times. Example: I live in the US, so I naturally want to connect to...you guessed it, the US. But the matchmaking is sending me to Russia, EU....Africa? My internet is good I'm and used to leading my shots since that's all the G2R is (lead the shot heaven), but I can't play on these servers, the ping is too high, I can't hit anything. I'm better off not moving at all and shooting, even then I might barely scratch the target. I'm hoping that this is just a small kink in the overall process of mmr adjustments. Bug maybe?

 

Right now, if you're in the US, the Matchmaker will start considering matches in Europe and South America if you've been waiting in queue for more than 23 seconds.  If you've been waiting for more than 63 seconds, it will start considering worldwide servers.  I think this might be a bit aggressive for *all* players.  Assuming only back-end changes are possible, what if we put in a pilot level threshold above which this region expansion *does not ever* happen?  If you've played to pilot level 15, it's likely you're aware of how to check out other regions if there's nothing great in your own region ;)

[capnjosh]

I think the region expansion thing should exist in the form of a popup that says something like "No good matches were found in your region. Search in other regions? (Yes)/(No)".

 

How did you come up with 1750 as the cutoff number for high skill? Is it based on any particular data or is it just a best-guess starting number?

 

Agreed on the popup in the client.  We will have to add that in future client updates.

 

1750 was something CZero5 had been talking with other players about.  In a previous independent data-only look, 1800 was where the "long tail" really became pronounced (in terms of numbers of players).

[capnjosh]

I'm going to tombstone this thread and start a new one, so any additional feedback can be more clearly identified.

 

Here's the new post: https://community.pl...ker-updates-v2/