Ranked 2v2 & FFA

Luck only come into it when you don't talk to the other players.

I have played hundreds of FFA's with my friends onver team speak, and even in different RTS games, they are all the same diplomacy/intrigue/intelligence warfare/bluffing/poker experience that is utterly unlike and irreplaceable by any game ever.

And you can't account for the results of such in ranked, because the skill isn't so much in your ability on PA or command, hell ive had people come out to win a FFA game simply because they were the bottom bitch to my demands, and waited until I won the game for them.

But surviving isn't the only factor of skill in such a mode, the ability to survive helps but more often then it it's because you were left alive, rather then being skilled enough to survive an attack.

I'd like to place it on record that I beat Zaphod and Marshall at poker on the plane to Seattle.

I'd say that's a big part of the skill, knowing who and when to attack. The only part that's pure luck is landing zones.

Indeed, also, you quoted me, not loki.

No it doesn't. Glicko family is purely 1v1 by design any one that does have the multiplayer is a modification and the complexity and processing time increases linearly.

Edit: the main benefit of Glicko is that it's not patent encumbered and trademarked. So he keeps the price of a down for everybody.

Hey, I find that comment suggestive of the lgbt community highly offe-oh who am I kidding, it was hilarious.

But seriously, it is a video game, and skill will only get you... how many players actively participate in the ranked 1v1s? Like a thousand or so? ...only a thousand active players. Having a matchmaking mode with a fun factor that actually minimizes chances to win from sheer skill alone, will actually cater to the people that can't stand 1v1 matchmaking for the same fact the "elite" love 1v1s, because at their skill level it is a given win to that "elite" guy. Why would the "victim" want to play? If it were me, I'd mail the "elite" guy a jar of petroleum jelly with a note to go play with himself because I won't click matchmaking if I know Ima lose. I'd rather play with a huge luck factor just for the lols of beating someone better out of sheer stupidity.

Lol.
I'd say it's not just pure luck (or stupidity) that allows those of us lacking the top player's build orders and hamster-on-crack APMs to have a chance in FFA. There's an inherit balancing in FFAs, the biggest opponent often gets targeted as they are the most dangerous. The variability of strategic possibilities means that it's much harder to formulate a consistently winning build order/strategy.
And that's really the holy grail for RTS, that variability and unpredictability of strategy that makes every game different.
I don't see that in the top 1v1 replays.

I'm just saying that luck or the unknown is a factor in strategy and tactics. Which for some reason a some people get a little bit pissee about that. I don't understand why.

know this is hard right now with current numbers, just leaving a post here saying I'm for it.

If people want to play FFA that is going to happen anyways.

Difficult, yes. But I wouldn't bet on the CPU intensive. For instance you can extend Glicko to account for matches with more then two players.
In Glicko there is the part where your score for a single match is calculated, and it uses the chance of you winning the game which is simply the probability you winning and the other guy losing. My guess would be, that for a game with more than one opponent this extends to the probability of you winning and everybody else losing. This isn't computationally more complex then using standard Glicko.
The difficult part is to show that this formulation still holds up the convergence properties of Glicko, so that for an infinite number of games all players converge to their rating.

But this isn't about matchmaking, this is about ranked 2v2 and FFA's.

I know all you guys love your matchmaking and stuff.

Disagree, the unknown is always a factor in strategy or tactics. You cannot account for everything once you get underway.

I remember Microsoft used a ranking algorithm for FFAs in Modern Warfare 2, another game I played on Xbox for years. IIRC it was a good system.

....you can't account for how tired you'll get 45mins in, you can't account for your opponent getting into your head...

Actually, if everyone is on team speak with you and/or you know every player in the game well, you can predict most outcomes.

That said, random pub stomp ffas are fun too

Very true.

Still that does add an additional meta game of diplomacy and politics regarding the known values.

Most people ally against me because of this.

I went with Microsoft research on this because I'm neither a statistician or a computer scientist. They made TrueSkill simpler then Glicko to deal with these problems.

Edit: corrected typo

Heh. I have that problem too. Not so much in pub stomps, but when we have a realm game or two, half the game is the other people trying to stop me from murdering them and convincing them to fight eachother.

The problem with TrueSkill is that it is patent encumbered and trademarks. You would need to have a license in order to use it and a license to say that you're using it. Which just increases the cost of the game for everybody. Also it only handles up to 16 players you would need to modify it for 40 player matches or anything in between.