Ladders in 1.0

I know I won't really be playing (other than browsing patch changes) until there is a button I can press to play some 1v1 multiplayer without trying to find which custom game has a host which isn't AFK. I'm not a very social person, I don't really like talking to people or playing many team games/waiting to arrange crap. I don't type glhf or gg. So yeah for people like me, its a fairly critical feature to have implemented. Until then its easy to hit play game in Starcraft 2 where I am playing in less than a minute. Skill level really doesn't matter. You wont learn much unless you lose. It should even itself out over time. But I've waited this long, so whatever. Just know that there may be some player base that specifically needs this feature and will not be adding our +1 to the population until it exists within game.

Which is why having a matchmaking players list, and accepting a matchup with a player in the list makes the game for both of you. Because rules can be tricky, maps can be tricky, and the person can be afk so just sending 5 equal ranked players match requests will yield 1 successful match and is doable in 5 seconds.

Rank number in lobby list isn't a terrible idea, but PAStats 1v1 has a button that automatically matches players together with a click of a button and neither player even touches the lobby options as to make sure the rules are fair. If the vanilla game had an option that put everyone in a list and any 2 players that agree to matchup are put in a fairly generated game, that would satisfy this request reasonably.

HOWEVER, LADDERS IN 1.0, if you think about it, if you want a ladder, you want to play online, and if you want to play online, you have the internet.... you see where I am going with this? If you have the internet, you can patch your game, so if it was a patch within the first month or two of release, whats the problem officer?

I'll bring it up. There are downsides to this as well though. For example since the number doesn't represent skill people who are bad at the game might have a serious issue if they have spent a lot of time in game.

It's not the argument itself, just a summary. Just like you guys haven't really explained your reasoning itself, only mostly said that you have reasoning/experience on the matter.

Depends on why they weren't playing at the time, if they left because they didn't like a specific element then an update that doesn't change anything about that element they didn't like isn't likely to bring them back.

Also I think the reason games like LoL or Dota snowballed has more to do with thier starting momentum than anything else, I get you guys are working the long term angle but that doesn't negate the effects of a bad/sub-par start if that happens

It's like running a marathon, but doing the first 25% with only one shoe. Sure you get the second shoe eventually, but maybe you'll hurt your foot, negating the effect of getting your second shoe anyways and you still won't do as well as others at your skill level who had 2 shoes to begin with.

Mike

True this can be an issue in Spring as well- although usually the active players get to know each other pretty well so you can usually adjust balance accordingly. I'd also argue that a veteran low skill player is still usually better than a new very high skill player, simply due to better knowledge of the game (everyone usually learns something) so it's better than nothing at all.

OK I'll tried but I'm not a stat expert. I have absoutely no idea of average games usage so I make some big assumption. Do not hesitate to correct me...

So you need at least one person of your level.

I assume average player plays 2h a week.

So you have 2 chance on 168 (hours per week) that the person is connected.
And (2/168) * (2/168) that you and the other player are connected.

Average game last 45 minutes
I do not want to wait more than 5 minutes to find a game.

So you have (2/168) * (2/168) * (5/50) * (5/50) that you and the other player are connected and available to play the game.

I you assume that third of players want to use the ladder and that 3 chance on 4 to get a hit in 5 minutes is required for the ladder to run smoothly.

You need at least :
(168/2) * (168/2) * (50/5) * (50/5) * 3 * (4/3) players
2 822 400 active players of your level !!!!

(I assume this is a worldwide game and so players connect equally at random time)

That sound crazy !

Was not aware of the matchmaking feature of PAstats. Still an external solution though. But I digress, keep patching. We will be waiting.

Except they have. "One of our guys did some math and the number of people int the queue is likely low enough that the matchmaking won't have enough players to make good matches with."

Leagues aren't the only way to implement a ladder. The discussion has already drifted towards ranking by numbers (and there's been a few wildcard ideas). So while I see many different people clamoring for a ladder, I'm not convinced they're all clamoring for the same kind of ladder.

So who's to say that what Uber implements will actually be the mythical ladder that so many desire?

I don't get why you wouldn't orient PA towards multiplayer.

....it's multiplayer that made this type of game fun in the first place!!

and I don't mean any fun. I had fun playing versus AI in supcom but that was only fun-fun.

and I though that was the most fun to be had in the universe until I discovered multiplayer. THEN, I started to have FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN-fun.

now that was something else.

and is. I'd just like for a game that has no desyncs, no 'other's' lag, higher specs and beef.

From my understanding we have no way of knowing the validity of any of those numbers at this stage, they're dependent on a lot of things we can't know for sure yet.

Mike

at the very least have this, so those of us who are the only gamer in their vincinity (like me) can set up decent multiplayer matches.

Well you have to go on the best possible numbers you have. And the numbers suggest that in every RTS that isn't only online multiplayer a low percentage of the total playerbase plays online multiplayer. Just saying "well the numbers might be wrong, we don't know based on things that might happen in the future" isn't really a reason to discount information which they have from this, and it seems previous RTS games as well. I'm much more willing to trust numbers and statistics from actual play than instincts that people want to play the game the way you want to play the game.

And also bear in mind that Uber has the actual player numbers, and the peaks of players that appeared following each announcement, including the Steam release.

Time played is a terrible metric for balancing teams and judging abilities.

I think it's fairly safe to say most players (myself included) tend to start out with single player and progress to multi player if / when they feel up to it.

That seems like a decent reason not to orient it towards multiplayer. Why work to alienate the largest proportion of the playerbase.

It works ok in Spring... Ok- it isn't any use for sorting out the experienced players from each other, but it does identify the very new players easily and an experienced player will usually beat a new player just from knowledge of the game.

To be clear this *wouldn't be a replacement for a matchmaking / balancing system* but rather a good indicator / first step that's easy to implement to help players of similar play time find each other.

it's not half bad by my count.
it gets you half the way there. it's just kinda soggy and inacurate if you don't have ranking alongside.

ranking alone is also soggy.

that's my FAF experience. you give me game count and rank and I can tell you his exact performance with a % of certainty that goes up as the game count does.

yeahh ...uhhh.

you mind actually reading into what I'm saying?

PA's stats don't mean much considering it's alpha state is probably deterring people from playing with others. a feeling I can relate to.

I was saying : "it's multiplayer that made this type of game fun in the first place". Read : "supcom's playerbase was mostly multiplayer. FAF's is crushingly multiplayer"

so I have contrary stats of a game that has actually matured past release and currently has more players, where PA isn't released yet.

not only that but we can seriously take that data into account since it's the same devs for both games and the former partly inspired the latter.