Clan matchmaking

(tokamak) #1

The most difficult about competitive play is the amount of organisation and planning to get two clans together for a match. It requires third party websites and calendars and even then you need to trust the other side to show up.

My point is, the bar into competitive play is too high for the average gamer. The idea alone of having to reserve fixed times in your agenda for a video game makes me sweat. Video games should be able to be played at an time you like.

Blizzard and most online chess games already figured it out. Integrated competition and matches. In World of Warcraft, you form a group and sign yourself up into a qeue while the system automatically finds another team equal to your experience and rating.

I think, why isn’t this possible for shooters? How hard is it to simply be able to gather your clan together and sign up into a waiting line while you’re automatically matched with another clan? This would lower the bar for ‘public competition’ by miles.

An integrated competition option would open up a vast range of possibilities. A group of friends who can’t call themselves a clan yet can still sign up under ‘skirmishers’ and join a group of like minded players so the system could group them up in a make-shift clan to still experience how it would be to fight against a real clan (who of course have the option to reject make-shift clans, but would still appreciate it for practice sessions).

Seriously, there’s so much you can do with an automatic match system. Brink is already attempting to blend the difference between singleplayer and multiplayer, why not take that extra step and try to blend public play with competitive play?

(deadlights) #2

I think this is a good Idea Tok. I can see it being difficult to do… For one, this would only really work if SD supplied all the servers like Blizzard. Or an online Chess game does not take much to run so it can be hosted by the user. That is the first problem.

If SD supplies all servers… Then DO IT! If not, well… I dunno.

But good idea. But you know IRC works really well if an in-game system does not :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #3

Third part dedicated servers could ‘sign up’ to the match making device in a similar fashion they can chose between being ranked or unranked.

I can easily see a few clans making their servers available for this. Certainly for p2p on consoles wouldn’t have problems.

(deadlights) #4

Yeah they could… But I can see it being unreliable… But thats just my opinion.

(Zhou Yu) #5

I’d definitely like to see this, for an example of a game that did this really well, taking a look at World in Conflict isn’t a bad idea.

Me and three other friends who never play comp in anything could sign up as a clan and go do a quick skirmish in 30-45 minutes or so against a clan of not dissimilar skill levels. We just joined a queue (similar to wow arena) and the system found us a decent game against another okish team on a sensible map with ok settings (agreed by both teams iirc).

It was a really elegant and efficient solution to the problem casual players still have today playing the same game together. Try and get more than four or so guys online for almost any game and its a massive pain in the arse most of the time, especially if you just want to play with friends on the PC (deds/p2p/routers/vent/versions/patches/pain/agony). Valve games are a slight exception to the rule because of the very strong friends list implementation, but even trying to get a bunch of friends together for a round of L4D can seem less like having fun playing games and more like trying to resolve the middle east.

It should never be hard to play with friends, and if that rule is observed then it should also never be hard to play a “competitive” game with friends, as its essentially a question of a separate server and (mostly) slightly different settings.

(Shiv) #6

I too agree that this would be pretty tasty
I abused it quite allot on halo 3 and rainbow six on the xbox and 360, me and 2 or 3 mates guaranteed to play on the same team on a random map with some decent settings, it puckers to getting pubbers into comp as well… then you can mention it in the vids :slight_smile:
the thing that spoiled it on halo3 was the players not the game.

(retsy) #7

i think that’s a fantastic idea tokamak

(Floris) #8

I think requests like this come up for about every game, and we are lucky BRINK already goes halfway to accommodate what you’re requesting, considering you can form groups of people who play the game co-operativly. The only thing SD would need to add is an option to just face other co-op teams instead of all the other possible combinations of bots and players.

(tokamak) #9

Well yeah, combined with a rating and a nice ladder.

(Rahdo) #10

Nice ideas, definitely. We’re in the process of nailing down all our match making type stuff right now… will take these ideas to the gang :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #11

You could even add exclusive cloth pieces as rewards for the people who do well in the rating ladder, just like WoW really.

With rating i mean the normal chess like rating which usually starts at 1500 points and then diverges from there depending on how well your team performs.

The wow system is explained here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Arena_point

Integrating a ladder does the same thing as integrating multiplayer in singleplayer, people no longer have to visit scary websites with hardcore users on the messageboards in order to get into a clan with a few drill sergeants that show you how it’s done. You’re simply saying as a developper ‘competitive play is fun, try it out and receive the free hello kitty handbag on your character and even cooler stuff as you let your team progress’.

EDIT:

I’ve been thinking about this some more.

You can even combine it with normal pub play! If all members of the same clan are playing on the same (8 man) team against public players, then the system can automatically add them to the queue. When it detects another clan it will simply inform both groups that there are other clans present and asks them if they want to play a ‘rated’ match against each other.

If that’s too complex, you can always add a ‘clan list’ to the game. Just a public list that shows which clans are playing now and with how many they are.

(GlobalWar) #12

I love the idea!!

It would really bring competition to the casual player.

(stealth6) #13

it’s a great idea, but I would note not to make it like in Quake live, there players get a skill levela and then can only play players of the same skill level.

This isn’t so bad if your a loner, but i like to play with my friends and we are all different skill levels so we can’t join eachothers games :frowning:

So please make it an optional function not an obligatory function like in quake live

(tokamak) #14

Of course nobody is forcing it drown your troath.

When you’re with your full clan online, the matchmaker will simply ask you ‘hey there’s a team of the same skill-level present, would you two like to have a match against each other?’ on which then one team will be placed to one server and replaces a public team to the other. Just a little shifting.

I still don’t really know how the servers in Brink work so it might be much harder to implement then I really think but hey, as Locki said ‘ideas are cheap’ so let’s throw them around.

EDIT: Another note, clan matches should not reward xp in any way or form. This to avoid abusing the system and clans meeting up to farm xp. To make competitive play reward you can add a leaderboard, maybe feature leading clans on a special place on the stats site, and I personally I think it would be really cool (and a huge incentive to try competitive play) to get comp-exclusive clothing items as a reward for reaching higher rating scores.

(aimology) #15

Just set it up like combart arms. You wait, someone joins, teams play end of game.