Idea of, how represent player experience on pubs

(ZGToRRent) #1

Since, the game has secret PSR which is Score per minute from last 25 long matches, I wonder how devs can improve pub trashtalk about ‘unbalanced’ matches. Most of the people are very ignorant, they think, level=skill which is a complete bull****.

What about making a public ranks that will show the icon on scoreboard, so people will have a little bit more knowledge, how this player was doing. The server browser will show the average skill level on this server to make gameplay more balanced , even quick join will work better if average PSR will be a thing, sended from server to client.

5 or 6 ranks are enough to show this.

The concept of using PSR can go even further with server restrictions like, novice only server for example.

#2

I would support anything that removes the useless number from display! Great idea!

(Mustang) #3

I think it needs to take into account more than SPM, also focus on the current server rather than previous games with different players, if I get spanked by a three man team it’s utterly crap that they randomly get shuffled onto the same team again.

(Amerika) #4

The only thing that might make things better is the system looking at merc squads before the sorting is done and try to factor in how likely a player is to play a medic or an engineer. Of course the downside to this is those players might not want to play those roles but it’s literally the only thing that might help even stuff up.

Currently, and correct me if I am wrong, the system takes your last 20-25 games and assigns you a public ranking. Then both teams are sorted as best as they can be based on this number. However, that alone can be pretty off-putting and produce a lot of “stomps” by itself. For example, if one player has a crazy high public rating and tends to win despite the odds then they will end up with a bunch of newer players on their team and the other team will have a lot of medium level players. The really good player might end up doing well but the game might end up being a stomp because all of the new players on that team got beat down by the more experienced/better players on the other team. I think this contributes a lot to the feeling of getting stomped. Or at least that’s how it seems to work in pubs I am in a lot of times. Min 10 doesn’t fix this at all.

So a system that not only factors in how likely both teams are to have a competent medic or two and engineer or two and maybe focus less on making the team skill numbers balanced out and more on making both teams have at least a couple good players might produce better results in regards to avoiding people feeling like they are getting stomped (even if they win).

Also, yes, get rid of that stupid account level. That’s one of the biggest contributing factors to “omg unbalanced”. It has no purpose in the game right now and has mostly negatives associated with it. #bringbackmerclevels

(Nail) #5

have a star

(ragnak) #6

Not really sure why its such a hard concept for SD to understand that account level only generate toxic behavior. I am kinda tired of getting insulted solely for my level, people leaving just becaue they see my level or constantly changing team to mine screwing team balance even more.

In any case, i would be happy if the only thing showed on scoreboard is your name, without any other useless number, i would probably be fine with mercs levels tho (if there is a cap that is, otherwise nothing would change).

(NeroKirbus) #7

This happens to me way too often… There just needs to be a ranked PSR, and a public PSR. It should keep track of all of your public wins/losses, SPM, and other stats to create it. It’s really foolish to just have a PSR generated from only recent games; League of Legends has an aggregated ELO for public games and from my experience it worked well.

#8

First of, hello. I come from the nexon forums and thought I’ll participate here as well. :slight_smile:

Regardless of what happens, something needs to change. May it be symbols showing the average skill of a server, merc levels or anything else.
Currently, I’m lvl 44 and it’s slowly starting.
Just yesterday someone asked how long it took me to get to that level.
A few weeks ago a couple of players switched to my side which screwed over balance resulting in a total spawn camp and toxic chat.
I have now set my Steam profile to private but however you take it, people will constantly poo on you, chance increasing the higher your level is.

Happy new year, by the way!

(Remedie) #9

If something like pub rating is hown on score board, everybody will try to change team with the higher rank as they do for level.

(NeroKirbus) #10

Those PSRs need to hidden to say the least. There is no reason to project it, it should merely be about having nice balanced games. For a while meow people have said to hide levels, and I agree. It does nothing to further the game other than show your veterancy (in a poor way).

(ailmanki) #11

IMHO something feels wrong / is wrong.

Its the first game I see players not wanting to show off with there high level.

First off the level itself can be gained by a complete noob, even after reaching lvl 50 - he can still be cannon fooder.
Then there is the value to shuffle teams, I suppose its something based on ELO…
And lastly there is the real skill of a player and his current mood.

Wrote a lot, comparing DB to ET … but deleted it again. Basically players raging about levels is a symptom of a different problem.
If you don’t show that anymore they will get even more anxious.

Why is there no global stats? Where I can see the top player, where I can see the player having spent most hours, the player having hit most feet with cricket bat… and so on.
I imagine, I jump into a game; get beaten by a strong player - click on his name, get linked to a stats page, and I can see myself what makes that player so much better then me. Best would had been if I could watch his play… but I guess that’s not going to happen soon.

Lastly even if you disagree with all this, at least agree with the notion that LVL is really meaningless, its confusing, and gives a wrong impression.
Actually just replace LVL with something reflecting the real value of the player.

(Nail) #12

show how much money they spent

(ZGToRRent) #13

That’s why manual team switch should be disabled and servers should be more restricted.

(Szakalot) #14

naah, its a pub; let people switch.

the only time you can switch is if the other team has less players. so those scenarios given here of multiple people switching simultaneously, in a coordinated way are greatly exaggerated.

the biggest problem is the system looking at recent matches. its mindnumbingly silly how anyone thinks its a good idea. things that affect your score/min in one specific match include:

  • who won
  • which team is better
  • how many badges you got
  • how many medics your team has, and how many do the opponents have
  • which merc you are playing, and which mercs you are best at
  • which mercs EVERYONE else is playing, and which mercs they are best at

this can go on and on.

While it could be possible to devise a system that averages your score/min based on the mercs you have currently in squad, the system could at best only guess which one you are going to play with (if i have fletcher which is my main and an arty which i suck at in my merc squad, ill be better than estimated if i play fletcher, and worse if i play arty), based off of playtimes (if i play 80/100h total with fletcher, its more likely ill play fletcher again, and not arty).

Put the bloody total stats in the skill-factor determination! Stop this ridiculous idea of basing it off recent matches, where recent matches are consistently a dice roll of how crappy your team is, and how good is the opponents. I can think of no single reason why recent games are supposed to be more indicative of your total skill level, across all mercs used.

(UnaSalusVictus) #15

oh this, this a million times…

i bitch about the balance because…its soooo wrong soooo much of the time and, when you get a good balance and i goes a few rounds and everybody is having a good time, because, its a challenge for everybody…then a few people leave and it shuffles and puts serveral of the best players on one team, and medocre players fill the other…it either ends with the medocre players winning because if its only 2-3 good/great players and some real ****lords(me at times!!!) you endup with it being a “we cant carry this” situation…OR to many good/great players are on the other team and…its just as bad the other direction.

what i think is needed for pubs is a longer pre-match warmup, (a few min at least3-5?) so everybody gets loaded in, it can then do a shuffle, if the maps moving objective to obejctive to quickly, it could be set to auto shuffle (as some other games i have played did) i mean its not acure but, currently…its like 2/3 of matches are just steamrolls/spawnrapes and taht gets old…the good rounds though…so intense…if every round where like that…

(UnaSalusVictus) #16

[QUOTE=ailmanki;543665]IMHO something feels wrong / is wrong.

Its the first game I see players not wanting to show off with there high level.

First off the level itself can be gained by a complete noob, even after reaching lvl 50 - he can still be cannon fooder.
Then there is the value to shuffle teams, I suppose its something based on ELO…
And lastly there is the real skill of a player and his current mood.

Wrote a lot, comparing DB to ET … but deleted it again. Basically players raging about levels is a symptom of a different problem.
If you don’t show that anymore they will get even more anxious.

Why is there no global stats? Where I can see the top player, where I can see the player having spent most hours, the player having hit most feet with cricket bat… and so on.
I imagine, I jump into a game; get beaten by a strong player - click on his name, get linked to a stats page, and I can see myself what makes that player so much better then me. Best would had been if I could watch his play… but I guess that’s not going to happen soon.

Lastly even if you disagree with all this, at least agree with the notion that LVL is really meaningless, its confusing, and gives a wrong impression.
Actually just replace LVL with something reflecting the real value of the player.[/QUOTE]

it always made me wonder why they even had levels its not like theres any level restricted anything…

at level 7 i had a few rounds with 3 guys in the 57-65 range, who where medocre at best but they been playing a long time and alot, they admitted they where not that good and explained to some people complaing about them being on the same team that, levels just an indicator of how much you have played not how well you have played…

i would like to see K/D go away from end of round stats in objective and stopwatch where the goal isnt kills but…the bloody objective.

k/d being there causes problems as you will get cra for bad k/d evne if you have high score(i know i ahve) i had a fellow giving me crap when spent a round playing aura tonight infact…i had 3 kills like/ 15 deaths…i had a ****load of revieves and healing done though…but…k/d to him was a sign of how useful you where…(i dont get it…if it was tdm of dm yeah but…objective/ctf/cah/ect game types where your working on a goal thats not just more kills…its…distracting people from the objective.

and i think just offering a way to look at their states with the 3 mers they ahve in loadout would be interesting.

i think the lack of ranked board and such comes down to…all the problems they had with xing code and hax causing the death of competitive play, and thus no rush to get out/finish a system to track and report that information.

may not be the case but, i wouldnt in any way blame them…

what needs to happen is epic and other game engine developers need to come up with their on internal measures to help make hacking/cheating harder, so that ngs and the like either arent needed OR are not working so hard and have less things to try and detect…

i would be happy just to see level removed it would stop some stupid arguements…because those 3 high levels…where worse them me at lvl7 (im kinda evil with proxy…aloha snackbar!!!)

(MoonOnAStick) #17

Numeric account levels do seem to generate some bile. Maybe something further abstracted like badge ranks or number of cobalt Arty cards?

Visible score-per-minute would probably be worse as it’s not the greatest indicator of skill (obviously influenced by merc choice, team strength/composition) and attaching it to players gives an incentive to try to game it. Nothing wrong with using SPM to shuffle teams though. There’s only so much you can do while still allowing people to switch teams, join late, etc. and it’s a better starting point than a completely random shuffle. Just keep it private.

(ZGToRRent) #18

I think it’s a bad idea since the game had xp exploits and ability to farm kills/score on empty servers with friends.

(Szakalot) #19

that applies to both cases. If someone would go on a server wtih friends and farm 100/0 stats with 2k score/min, this would terribly screw up balance with that player for the next 25 games.

And this is a fringe scenario, the vast majority of players do not ever use these. Plus the only benefit of doing the farming is having much harder opponents (because the system would overestimate farmer’s skill)

(Kl3ppy) #20

In the last couple of weeks the balance was really strange. It happend that a 3-4 players with level >20 were one the one side and on the other side only players with lvls below 10. Games were pretty fast over.