It's harder than you think (Destiny)

by RC , UK, Thursday, May 01, 2014, 08:07 (3858 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by RC, Thursday, May 01, 2014, 08:12

3. Why not just use trueskill to match players with similar skills levels and gear?

I'm as stumped as you about the other question but couldn't this one simply be answered by "they don't have reliable access to TrueSkill anymore"?

I'm no programmer, but it doesn't seem hard to determine which skills a player's avatar has, and match them up to other avatars with similar skills (or lack of skills).

Considering location, when players are online, what they're playing, if they're available for matching and skill level, when you add gear and character levels to that it's easy to reduce the potential good matches to... zero.

And you don't even have any information on player skill initially so that's just a crapshoot. (4v4 pure trueskill takes 150 games IIRC)

All the data I've seen on PvP matchmaking says that a huge proportion of players complete less than 20 PvP matches, ever.

The conclusion drawn is that a lot of players are jumping into PvP, getting horrible matches that they don't find fun, and quitting forever. That player bleed hurts long-term matching quality since less people are online playing (*cough* Halo 4, starting with AR and Pistol *cough*).

Solution? Sorry, but you have to 'break' the pure experience to ensure the (slightly delayed) first experience of PvP is more likely to be a good one and long-term match quality is higher due to higher player retention.

Requiring that players invest a few hours of time in solo/cooperative first - although it reduces the number of players available initially - cuts the bottom off the experience/gear/skill spreads. If they can get through it, they'll need to have a minimum of aiming and movement skill, they'll have to pick up some extra gear, and they'll naturally learn a little about the game's specific mechanics.

It's also possible - though I don't know if Bungie is doing it - to get preliminary information on where exactly their skill lies on the curve by examining their performance on these 'prologue' tasks in relation to other players: accuracy, time taken, damage taken, deaths etc.

This all results in - on average - better matches when they do start playing PvP. Better for them, for their opponents and the game as a whole if those players stick around.