A plea to ZoS to introduce a proper ELO / Matchmaking system

GypsyKing22

Dear ZoS, @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

A proper ELO system would solve so many issues currently plaguing the small scale PvP community. The main reason a lot of people are vocal about not enjoying the deathmatch game mode is actually not because they don't like PvP or even the game mode itself. (as silly as that may sound)

It is very simple - people don't like constantly losing and being dunked on, and you can tell this is 100% the case by simply looking at the comments where people give a reason as to why they don't like deathmatches.

"Sweaty tryhards", "I have to run meta gear and I don't want to gold weapons when just trying new sets", "well under 50 bgs are fun when you don't have gold crafted weapon tryhards", "I can make a difference in objective modes", and the list goes on and on. It is clearly not about them not liking deathmatch - it is simply about them not liking the feeling of being helpless, useless, and weak, since nobody likes feeling that way.

And yet, with the current 'fake MMR' system in place, it is simply inevitable that once you have played enough games and amassed enough medal score, even if you aren't actually a good player, you are going to be matched up against, and repeatedly get destroyed in deathmatch modes by people who also play regularly and amassed a certain amount of medal score, and are actually good players.

If you don't let the smaller mouse win from time to time, he is going to stop playing with you. Because in a PvP team game, you aren't going to let the smaller mouse win, it is the job of the matchmaking system to make sure that mice of every size get to enjoy themselves by playing against mice who are similarly sized. With the current matchmaking system, after having played a certain amount of matches and amassing enough aggregate medal score, gigantic radioactive skeevers are completely devouring the occasional small and regular sized mice who happens to have played enough games to be considered 'in the same skill bracket' as the gigaskeever.

This basically means that battlegrounds deathmatches have an 'expiry date' for everyone but the most skilled players, since eventually you are going to amass enough aggregate medal score where you simply will be matched with killers every game, and you will perform very poorly because of this, which will drive you away from the game mode, or even from the game itself.

I have outlined in another thread how an ELO system could be implemented without completely having to revamp the medal score system that is currently in place, but I will not copy that here - not because "you can go check it out if you want", but simply because I believe that the ZoS team is more than capable of coming up with an excellent ELO system, much better than something I alone could.

Moriz

it's not too late to save this game for PVPers ZOS, but the longer you wait the more competition you are going to have in the MMO market.

Zekka

[snip] the putrid """matchmaking""" is still one of the main reason why BGs are so dead as it NEVER produces balanced teams, resulting in a lot of blowouts for the stacked teams and it should be addressed.

[edited for thread bumping]

mmtaniac

MMR wasn't problem when random was default and random was only option ,mmr is problem mostly on Deathmatch. Less skilled players can't compete with good players, on objectives this kind of thing not exist , you can just ignore to hard fights and do objective. Weak players on objective can still be useful. On deathmatches they are useless most ot the time. Good player can do everything ,bad player must focus on something.

mandricus

Lot of people seems to know exactly how MMR works (only going up and never going down, cumulative by medal score, considering only wins and not losses, etc.) which is quite odd considering that it was never shared by Zos any detailed information about how it works.
I would say the opposite: IMHO MMR works too well, because I've played thousands of Battlegrounds, I'm not in high MMR bracket by any mean, and I'm always put against the same people more or less (in every match there are always 5 or 6 people that i know by the names because I've encountered them hundreds of times). And no, I'm not in the BG elite club by any mean, even if I played thousands of Battlegrounds (real number, not exaggerating).
I don't know how MMR exactly works, but if it was up to me, I would have done something quite simple and effective: you just need to look at the APM (action per minutes) or the average damage / healing output of a player, and then put players together based on those average values. After a certain number of matches, you will have a pretty representative average of APM / damage output, and I'm pretty sure the matches would be quite balanced most of the times. I observed that, in the "typical" match (not considering outlier matches, due to the fact that after a certain amount of queue time the matchmaking system start to "relax" its thresholds and matching algorithms become more random) usually most players end up with similar total damage values. I'm usually sitting at 1 million damage per match, more or less, depending on the matches, and my opponents are most of the times in the same range, while I know for sure that there are players that are able to easily go above 3 mln damage every single match or even more, and I'm not usually put against them (luckily for me).
I'm to a point that I queue random group battleground from time to time even if I'm alone, because I realized that the group queue, having to match different groups with very different MMR individual values, has wider thresholds, and there is more variety (I'm put against new players almost constantly, sometime encountering almost complete newbies, closing matches with 20+ kills, sometimes encountering very well organized pro-premades that completely obliterate me and anyone else).
So I would say the opposite: in solo queue MMR works too well, to the point that it becomes boring and stale after a while, because matches become like a small club of 30 / 40 players and you tend to play against the same players over and over and over.

Amottica

GypsyKing22 wrote: »

Dear ZoS, @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

A proper ELO system would solve so many issues currently plaguing the small scale PvP community. The main reason a lot of people are vocal about not enjoying the deathmatch game mode is actually not because they don't like PvP or even the game mode itself. (as silly as that may sound)

It is very simple - people don't like constantly losing and being dunked on, and you can tell this is 100% the case by simply looking at the comments where people give a reason as to why they don't like deathmatches.

I can only go by what players have said but the various threads complaining about getting DM so often is because they do not like being stuck in DM most of the time. In other words, it is about the game mode itself as they would like a variety of game modes.

divnyi

Category: would be nice to have, but would not happen

thesarahandcompany

I don't think an ELO system can work in PvP because of "play the way you want." They have no way to decipher tanks from dps from healers. Tanks have no role in pvp right now because of the 3 team system.

A good step toward ELO would be first to create a 2 team 6v6 BG or 12v12 BG arena unranked.

YoureWrongImRight

ELO is literally useless in every game because your true impact on a match is not measurable.

APM is a bad measure as people can just run around accomplishing nothing at all.

Damage means nothing as you can have a build that just deals a lot of AOE and when people are constantly brawling in a pile you can rack up tons of useless not effective damage into the millions.

Kills means nothing as classes like sorcs have access to better executes and are more likely to get death blows.

High healing just means you are countering the large amounts of aoe from the guy putting out 3M non effective damage.

Wins don't matter because people can carry you.

Losses don't matter because you can be a great individual player and get put with 3 people that have no idea what they're doing and have zero chance of winning.

You cannot measure how many times somebody recognized their team mate was getting assisted on and threw down their ult to save them, or streaked overtop of them at just the right moment to give them that extra second to stay alive. Basic examples of what separates skilled teams from unskilled which are not reflected at all in their measurable stats.

Even in games where MMR is considered to be effective you always get that one person on your team where you go "Huh? how did you even get to this rank playing like that". And it happens CONSTANTLY.

Open world is not ranked and why should BG's be ranked? It is just a faster way to engage in quick combat with others, instead of running to an area in a large open world and hoping to come across some people you can fight against. At least you know you will not be out numbered and that gives you a fighting chance.

The attempt to balance what cannot be balanced just leads to needless long wait times as it tries to match you against people it thinks you'll have good fights with, and then after the long wait time it fails to do so anyway.

Even with "proper" MMR how many matches are good? 1 of 5? 1 out of 10 if you're lucky where you go... "DAMN I don't even care which way this goes, this is a good match"... RARE.

Jusey1

As someone who has reached Grandmaster (or Master) in other games which does uses a proper hidden ELO mechanic... No. While an ELO system can make a balanced match, it won't fix the issues at large and can even introduce new issues. Plus, it's kinda nice to play PvP without worrying about the matchmaking breaking, which can and will happen a lot. Especially if you're in a group (since ELO usually goes up and down base on wins more so than your actual performance)...

On top of that, due the vast amount of mechanics and elements that can have an effect on the outcome of any given match... It'll be hard to measure a player's skill in this kind of scenario anyways.

Drdeath20

At some point you are gonna have to admit to yourself that, while the pvp can be somewhat fun, it is just no where near a finished product and really more of a mini game.

Ratharel

To be honest it feels to me like we do not have even the simplest matchmaking implemented at all. Each consecutive match feels like I'm thrown against different tier of players. First deathmatch yesterday - "wow, I'm a God" - something like 15/1/15 K/D/A. Second one, I felt like playing PvP for the very first time, can't even scratch the guys from other teams, ended like 2/15/2 K/D/A with some random kills scored on a guys with 5% HP left. Third one was a breeze and got me achievement for Quadruple kill. Fourth one, got beaten so hard that I didn't even score a kill and whole team ended up with something like 60 points.

Necrotech_Master

Ratharel wrote: »

To be honest it feels to me like we do not have even the simplest matchmaking implemented at all. Each consecutive match feels like I'm thrown against different tier of players. First deathmatch yesterday - "wow, I'm a God" - something like 15/1/15 K/D/A. Second one, I felt like playing PvP for the very first time, can't even scratch the guys from other teams, ended like 2/15/2 K/D/A with some random kills scored on a guys with 5% HP left. Third one was a breeze and got me achievement for Quadruple kill. Fourth one, got beaten so hard that I didn't even score a kill and whole team ended up with something like 60 points.

this is my general experience from doing BGs casually (before all the ridiculous testing, i havent actually played BGs since october 2021, been doing more cyrodiil lol)

divnyi

@Ratharel I don't think they have enough players for proper matchmaking. And situation you described can happen even if it's the same 12 players, just splitted into different teams.

Iriidius

divnyi wrote: »

@Ratharel I don't think they have enough players for proper matchmaking. And situation you described can happen even if it's the same 12 players, just splitted into different teams.

A bad MMR System also reduced the players you can play against and needs enough players.
Atm MMR is the battleground points you earned on this char in all battlegrounds since last Reset. The more battlegrounds you do and the more points you get the higher your MMR gets. If you get 3rd and no XP in battlegrounds and have to do more for your XP your MMR raises faster. Somewhen you are pushed out of battlegrounds because you cant win anymore. Should replace this MMR with a better Indicator for strength. High ApM Players still loose against low ApM Players with Carry gear, so not a good Indicator for Strength. The lack of a good Indicator for Player strength is the Problem.
I usually do 1 battleground a day on average 2 chars to get daily 100k ap(more if need) and get matched against very strong players.

Aznox

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

ELO is literally useless in every game because your true impact on a match is not measurable.

Your true impact over a specific match may not be measurable, but that's not a problem at all.

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

If you have a better winrate than others at your current ELO, it just means you are performing better at achieving the desired output, so the system just pushes you up until your winrate is normalized.

divnyi

Aznox wrote: »

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

Winrate? In 3-team games? In objective modes? HAhahaha. No.

Cuddlypuff

PVP in this game is fun but it definitely is not competitive for the most part. How will MMR even work?

Aznox

divnyi wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

Winrate? In 3-team games? In objective modes? HAhahaha. No.

DM queue and Objective queue should get separated rankings. (Or DM only if the objective crowd doesn't want one, i don't care really).

What's the problem with 3-team DM ? (I mean "problem that would be specific to ranking based on winrate", let's not go off-topic)

Superior pre-made teams or individuals always demonstrated their ability to achieve better-than-random winrate.

Those individuals or groups should be consistently matched with each other if we want to see a more competitive scene/meta emerge.

Resulting data (ex: dedicated healers topping leaderboards, group-buff sets providing better results, etc..) can then be used to act on balancing based on factual and publicly available data.

YoureWrongImRight

Aznox wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

ELO is literally useless in every game because your true impact on a match is not measurable.

Your true impact over a specific match may not be measurable, but that's not a problem at all.

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

If you have a better winrate than others at your current ELO, it just means you are performing better at achieving the desired output, so the system just pushes you up until your winrate is normalized.

So if I am playing a healer, and healing my ass off, constantly highest healing output in the match, but my DPS all hit like wet noodles so I can never win, that means I am bad and I should de-rank? or is it that my impact is measurable beyond strictly win loss or k/d?

Aznox

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

ELO is literally useless in every game because your true impact on a match is not measurable.

Your true impact over a specific match may not be measurable, but that's not a problem at all.

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

If you have a better winrate than others at your current ELO, it just means you are performing better at achieving the desired output, so the system just pushes you up until your winrate is normalized.

So if I am playing a healer, and healing my ass off, constantly highest healing output in the match, but my DPS all hit like wet noodles so I can never win, that means I am bad and I should de-rank? or is it that my impact is measurable beyond strictly win loss or k/d?

One specific match win/loss is irrelevant, individual k/d is also irrelevant (a good healer will get a far better winrate than a mediocre bruiser in the current meta)

You need to think in average winrate over many matches, and compare yours to other players' in your bracket, let's say John and Paul.

Over 9 BG (or more, it's an example) the "wet noodle DPS" will statistically end up 3 times in your team, 3 times in John's team, 3 times in Paul's team.

If you are better than John and Paul at managing underperforming teammates, you will eventually outrank them.

Or you could all 3 be helpless with the underperformer, but you seized the opportunity better than Paul and John during fair/tight matches, you will also eventually outrank them.

Also, if the "wet noodle dps" really does bring down the winrate of teams getting him, he will quickly be set to a lower "ELO/MMR" and John/Paul/Yourself will stop getting him as a teammate.

MentalxHammer

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

How will MMR even work?

+ ELO for win, 0 ELO for second place, - ELO for last place.

YoureWrongImRight

Aznox wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

ELO is literally useless in every game because your true impact on a match is not measurable.

Your true impact over a specific match may not be measurable, but that's not a problem at all.

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

If you have a better winrate than others at your current ELO, it just means you are performing better at achieving the desired output, so the system just pushes you up until your winrate is normalized.

So if I am playing a healer, and healing my ass off, constantly highest healing output in the match, but my DPS all hit like wet noodles so I can never win, that means I am bad and I should de-rank? or is it that my impact is measurable beyond strictly win loss or k/d?

One specific match win/loss is irrelevant, individual k/d is also irrelevant (a good healer will get a far better winrate than a mediocre bruiser in the current meta)

You need to think in average winrate over many matches, and compare yours to other players' in your bracket, let's say John and Paul.

Over 9 BG (or more, it's an example) the "wet noodle DPS" will statistically end up 3 times in your team, 3 times in John's team, 3 times in Paul's team.

If you are better than John and Paul at managing underperforming teammates, you will eventually outrank them.

Or you could all 3 be helpless with the underperformer, but you seized the opportunity better than Paul and John during fair/tight matches, you will also eventually outrank them.

Also, if the "wet noodle dps" really does bring down the winrate of teams getting him, he will quickly be set to a lower "ELO/MMR" and John/Paul/Yourself will stop getting him as a teammate.

This all sounds very nice in a cute little scenario with only a few players to work with, not with a player pool of thousands where you can get paired with people for 3 matches and they drag you down, then they log off and you get the next 3 that drag you down. Now before you know it I am actually lower MMR than the guys who logged off after only 3 losses and I am dragged down for an additional 6 losses so you are actually lower rank than them, and we can go on and on.

And this still doesn't account for the fact that you can be the best player mechanically at doing your job and still lose, you can lose a lot, you can be the "best" individual player and lose 10 in a row against measurably worse players because there's a team dynamic at play. You can often have players that refuse to play with the team, they refuse to target assist, they won't go for the objectives, you basically never see them.

It also serves no purpose to rank anything in a game where the gear/stats are not normalized. Are you actually better or is your gear just better? 99% of the time it's probably the latter.

Aznox

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

YoureWrongImRight wrote: »

ELO is literally useless in every game because your true impact on a match is not measurable.

Your true impact over a specific match may not be measurable, but that's not a problem at all.

Just look at the desired output over several matches: winrate.

If you have a better winrate than others at your current ELO, it just means you are performing better at achieving the desired output, so the system just pushes you up until your winrate is normalized.

So if I am playing a healer, and healing my ass off, constantly highest healing output in the match, but my DPS all hit like wet noodles so I can never win, that means I am bad and I should de-rank? or is it that my impact is measurable beyond strictly win loss or k/d?

One specific match win/loss is irrelevant, individual k/d is also irrelevant (a good healer will get a far better winrate than a mediocre bruiser in the current meta)

You need to think in average winrate over many matches, and compare yours to other players' in your bracket, let's say John and Paul.

Over 9 BG (or more, it's an example) the "wet noodle DPS" will statistically end up 3 times in your team, 3 times in John's team, 3 times in Paul's team.

If you are better than John and Paul at managing underperforming teammates, you will eventually outrank them.

Or you could all 3 be helpless with the underperformer, but you seized the opportunity better than Paul and John during fair/tight matches, you will also eventually outrank them.

Also, if the "wet noodle dps" really does bring down the winrate of teams getting him, he will quickly be set to a lower "ELO/MMR" and John/Paul/Yourself will stop getting him as a teammate.

This all sounds very nice in a cute little scenario with only a few players to work with, not with a player pool of thousands where you can get paired with people for 3 matches and they drag you down, then they log off and you get the next 3 that drag you down. Now before you know it I am actually lower MMR than the guys who logged off after only 3 losses and I am dragged down for an additional 6 losses so you are actually lower rank than them, and we can go on and on.

And this still doesn't account for the fact that you can be the best player mechanically at doing your job and still lose, you can lose a lot, you can be the "best" individual player and lose 10 in a row against measurably worse players because there's a team dynamic at play. You can often have players that refuse to play with the team, they refuse to target assist, they won't go for the objectives, you basically never see them.

Oh please, let's drop the victim mentality and pick up some statistics!

Roll a 6dice and yes, sometimes you will get "1" six times in row, but that doesn't change the fact you'll average 3.5 over time.

Same goes for your "luck factor" with BG lobby.

You know what top ranking players will have in common? They won't be the ones explaining their performance with external factors.

It also serves no purpose to rank anything in a game where the gear/stats are not normalized. Are you actually better or is your gear just better? 99% of the time it's probably the latter.

This is off topic, ranking will rate win-rate, that's it, players at the top will have both superior skill and superior gear (and superior "roles", and yes maybe superior "classes", but then again balance can continue happening).

divnyi

MentalxHammer wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

How will MMR even work?

+ ELO for win, 0 ELO for second place, - ELO for last place.

Sounds like the system where second and third place would fight each other to the last breath instead of crab-bucket the first one.

It can use the number of team victory points gained in the game as a basis of performance.

Vaoh

BGs have two main issues imo:
• Some Objective game modes on large maps incentive avoiding PvP to win. This is a big part of the reason you get Objective matches people say F it and turn it into a Deathmatch. I can’t even blame them.
• Not enough players PvPing in this game.... Cyro and IC have the same issue. It may change in the future but currently combined with MMR, this is why many times you get into matches with all the same people or no games at all.

If there were more people it would be awesome to have weekend-only game modes, or larger scale game modes too.

divnyi

@YoureWrongImRight everyone are in the even conditions.
Random screws over? It screws over everyone.
Gear is op? Meta exists for everyone.

Lots of problems are non-existent in case of 4man premades.

Actually, won't hurt to have separate ratings for solo and group.

Aznox

MentalxHammer wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

How will MMR even work?

+ ELO for win, 0 ELO for second place, - ELO for last place.

A real "ELO" system would also give a score to each player's character, and take team average into consideration to weight the results.

That way for group DM, if your team is matched against a higher ELO team (because that's the closest in queue), you will lose less from a defeat and gain more from a win.

Aznox

Vaoh wrote: »

BGs have two main issues imo:
• Some Objective game modes on large maps incentive avoiding PvP to win. This is a big part of the reason you get Objective matches people say F it and turn it into a Deathmatch. I can’t even blame them.

Separate leaderboard for objective, people who like objective will compete for it and find the best objective winrate.

• Not enough players PvPing in this game.... Cyro and IC have the same issue. It may change in the future but currently combined with MMR, this is why many times you get into matches with all the same people or no games at all.

If there were more people it would be awesome to have weekend-only game modes, or larger scale game modes too.

I don't see the problem, sure you'll play against the same opponents most of the time but matches would be a lot more fair on average than they are right now.

YoureWrongImRight

@Aznox lol you can't equate a game with 1000's of variables to rolling a dice and finding an average.

It's more like if you had 1000 different sets of dice all with different sets of values and then tried to find logic in the outcome. Your example assumes that the variables are constant, when they most certainly are not.

Since there is no ranking there are no "top ranking" players.

@divnyi lol the answer to normalizing gear is just the "the meta exists for everyone"? How does this factor in that some people just spend more time on the game so they have gold everything vs people that are just part time and have epic gear. If you want to have actual competitive ranking and claim that you're better than everyone else you should probably take measures to ensure the playing field is level so it can actually mean something. It's not that much of an accomplishment or claim of skill when your stats are potentially 20-30% higher than theirs.

divnyi

How does this factor in that some people just spend more time on the game so they have gold everything vs people that are just part time and have epic gear.

It gives them different rating as an outcome of the fight.
Yes, this is the answer to gear question. Always was.
This is fantasy MMO after all.