Internal Playtest Recap – Matchmaking!

http://www.twitch.tv/bmuscles/b/581442815

• Kicks off with diving into matchmaking. Pretty simple stuff. New buttons and screens.
• You have to compete in 5 matches to be officially ranked.
• Obviously, no lobby settings, but the lobby setup is virtually the same.
• 
• Waiting queue shows queue time, average queue time, game count, players in game, and players in queue. All good information.
• Maybe they could set it up so we can spectate in-progress matches while queueing? That would be pretty AWESOME. (edit: doesn’t look like it. But that should be added in. Don’t know who you’re playing until after the match is over.)
• Slightly bumpy start with some fail to connects and difficulty finding opponents, but it’s an early pass, so that’s understandable.
• It looks like you don’t know who your opponent is going into the match? Which is an AWESOME feature if that’s the case. If it isn’t the case, it should be a feature.
• Brad self destructed the first match for demonstration purposes of walking through the system.
• Brad self destructed several times for the sake of getting a rank for demonstration purposes.
• 
• Badge for getting placed.
• Then brad played an game and went for straight up bomb bot spam.
• It didn’t work. If he had more intel, it might have worked.
• There’s gonna be a total of 5 ranks.
• 
• Uber is gonna stream more regularly!
• We’ll get to test out matchmaking on the PTE THIS MONDAY.

Yup.. bye bye school work.. its ladder testing time!

Awesome! cant wait =D

Awesome.

Don't want to speak too soon, but i really hope those maps we saw were placeholder.

Really awesome that we're getting this feature regardless.

Agreed. Really hope they expand the map pool.

I'd also hope the balance changes before the patch next week, but.......I guess not.

I doubt balance will change. That kind of thing takes alot more work to do properly. Alot of time to think, understand, and test.

*Balance isn't going to be their highest priority right now, since the point of ranked matchmaking is matching equally skilled players.

With a balance fit to rank in. This balance is not (by my standard) fit to play ranked games in.

I dunno. I mean, I don't have the manpower Uber has by any means, but I feel like I have more testers with more time to test. After all, they're staff isn't payed to play video games for 3-5 hours a day.

Then again, I'm not either.

And we've been doing the work for them. I've got the spreadsheet full of changes, 9-10 replays with examples of how it works. And a few casts coming out in the next few days. That covers the testing phase, I guess....

We'll see.

No, the 'balance' is absolutely fit for purpose for playing ranked matches in. Factions are symmetrical, and skill only really scales as a result of build order efficiency and understanding of what units are best for whatever situation.

Two equally low skilled players will not experience any imbalance whatsoever unless there is an imbalance in the map, or there are bugs which unequally affect each player.

Mechanical and functional parity is the first step (maps, skill matching etc.). Quality of gameplay is the next. Whenever you talk about 'balance', the latter is what you are actually referring to.

Also, i know all too well myself that as a player it's really easy to think that your answer is the right one - that it would only take 2 seconds to fix the gameplay. Every gamer in the entire world inherently holds this view. The hard part is recognising this and understanding that good gameplay design isn't as easy as that.

Any design can be balanced, but not all designs are good designs.

TL;DR I would rather Uber take their time making small changes to balance variables. When we lambast scathis and co for extreme to extreme balance by feel, let's try not to do the same thing. I'm also sure the ladder will help provide them with alot of statistical data to make more informed decisions.

And indeed I would agree with you. Except for one small thing: Scathis has not once set in stone an overall vision for each unit's role. I understand these things take time and they take testing - but that's what they've had, a year and a half to come up with some sort of foundation. I see no foundation. You need one for any good house to be built. Yes, the house can be built at a weird angle, but it doesn't matter if it has a solid foundation.

If I can write up a half-page document explaining the behavior and design of the balance in three hours from a year of experience, why hasn't Scathis done so with legions more experience then I'll ever hope to have?

The logical conclusion is that he doesn't care about the balance nearly as much as the rest of the game. I've given him the benefit of the doubt for quite a while. He still doesn't explain himself well and it's never clear what the end goal is.

....ON TOPIC THINGUMMY: Correct me if I'm wrong: leader boards are coming Soon, but not this update?

EDIT: Look, I've said this elsewhere, but if the balance's foundation required Dox to be the most versatile unit in the game, then I would be a little less anxious. I would still disagree with it, but I'd be more likely to run to a balance mod on a permanent basis than try to fix it.

Yay!! Brians updates are back ^.^

The Livestreams are back!





Now with less garat.....

But more Brad
And on the first livestream I heard Garat in the background

Yupp. I'm pretty excited that they're getting back into these streams. I always liked it back when they had more open communication. I just hope that they listen to our feedback. Things certainly are looking good.

That's actually something where the ladder might be a big help. A designer's vision of an RTS unit is rarely mirrored by the players use of them, and when it does, it tends to be a boring unit. At least if Starcraft 2 is any measure, and balance is basically religion in that game.

A ladder will deliver a lot of data about the different levels of play and help the meta to develope faster, since the percentage of competetive matches will significantly rise. Much easier to determine the efficiency of strategies and what is an effective counter to it, since a difference in skill-level will be less of an deciding factor. And Uber gets much more dedicated data to use for balancing, outside of players complaints.
That's at least my hope for it, the game needs a bit more balance.

Again, we've had months of gameplay, both competitive and non-competitive. There is plenty of data. WHY IS IT NOT FIXED?

Because either Uber doesn't care or Uber thinks that the current balance is "fun"

Uber have also said quite clearly that the balance is being worked on.

while I agree Uber is not working on it as fast as they could, that isn't the only issue at all. The other big reason is: because making a good balance takes a long time and you always, no matter how you balance it, will find a ton of people who love the current balance or hate the current balance.

As Mered said, why is it still being worked on rather than changes already been pushed out? It has been quite a long time.

Naval has been absolute crap for... always.

Back before 1.0 came out they said they were working on Naval balance. Instead Scathis changed over to HR and we never saw any balance changes.

Uber has no excuse for balance being in its current state. Particularly with Naval being in its current state.