[Discuss] Remove or change the ability to join lower threat Districts?

[indi 175]

Remove the "threat" tiers, implement hidden MMR. Let the remaining player base have at it and play with each other as efficiently as possible. On NA you're forced to sit in social, sometimes for 10+ minutes, spamming the only "silver" district available while there are two other "bronze" districts open. The way the system works right now is it punishes those who don't dethreat, while it rewards those who do dethreat with an easier time with both joining districts and farming newer players.

 

There shouldn't be four different threat levels locked to their own districts for a server that hovers around 500-700~ people.

[CookiePuss 5379]

Just wanted to chime in here and remind everyone that MattScott believes matchmaking is flawed and wants to rework and or scrap it.

 

Q: What will you be doing to tackle dethreating, and if so how? And will there be changes to the threat system?
A: This is definitely one of those systems that fall under the “Critical Mechanics” segment earlier. The threat system has to be altered at a minimum, or if necessary, scrapped and started over. There’s just a fundamental flaw at tracking your progress over such a short timeframe. To be able to bring your threat down quickly should not happen, and should take much much longer. We see this as an exploit in some ways, if it is an exploit it should be dealt with. If there’s an exploit then it should be on us to fix it. Shame on us for leaving the exploit in for so long, that it has a name and people can look it up.  

Edited June 9, 2018 by CookiePuss

[Darkzero3802 611]

Option 1: Everything gotta stay as it is (Simple one).

Uhhh fuck no? This threat system is garbage and its too easy to get gold and doesnt properly reflect ones skillz.

Option 2: Removing the ability to join lower threat districts complettly.

Guna cause dethreating to get worse.

Option 3: Change the abiility to join lower threat districts only for GOLDS, so Bronzes/Silvers can jump between their threat districts and goldies gotta stay in the Gold ones.

That was tried once before and doing that is what CAUSED the dethreating problem so once again no it doesnt solve the problem.

Option 4: Rework the matchmaking / threat system.

Now thats a good idea. Rework it to make threats more accurate, higher threats are actually worth working for and use a system that makes it harder to dethreat yet u will lose threat accurately if u go past u skill range.

[vsb 6171]

where option 5, where we allow golds to go wherever they want but everyone else is locked to a threat specific district

[Darkzero3802 611]

1 minute ago, BXNNXD said:

where option 5, where we allow golds to go wherever they want but everyone else is locked to a threat specific district

It dont exist

[UnawarePolarBear 50]

5 hours ago, TheOppositePolarBear said:

<le snipperino>

Played the original RTW betas, and then the APB:Reloaded betas when Neume-boy was around.

 

Yup, that's exactly what happened.

 

They locked the threats to those spooled instances and it hit the population hard. They backpedaled quickly and made it to where Bronze stayed locked in bronze, and Golds could join the silver district as appropriate.

 

When they changed to G1's threat system (expanded on the threats, changed the thresholds for being gold, and did some statistical changes to place folks, added trainee, etc) the de-threating issue seemed to increase exponentially. Primarily because a lot more folks were matched to gold and those who were "true golds" ran rampant on those folks.

 

Been this way ever since. Over the years we were promised the ideas of "cross-district matchmaking" and "hiding threat as an experiment" to see how these things would work, but they never did happen.

 

Also I am the real bear, u need 2 leave.

Edited June 9, 2018 by UnawarePolarBear

[Darkzero3802 611]

16 minutes ago, UnawarePolarBear said:

Played the original RTW betas, and then the APB:Reloaded betas when Neume-boy was around.

 

Yup, that's exactly what happened.

 

They locked the threats to those spooled instances and it hit the population hard. They backpedaled quickly and made it to where Bronze stayed locked in bronze, and Golds could join the silver district as appropriate.

 

When they changed to G1's threat system (expanded on the threats, changed the thresholds for being gold, and did some statistical changes to place folks, added trainee, etc) the de-threating issue seemed to increase exponentially. Primarily because a lot more folks were matched to gold and those who were "true golds" ran rampant on those folks.

 

Been this way ever since. Over the years we were promised the ideas of "cross-district matchmaking" and "hiding threat as an experiment" to see how these things would work, but they never did happen.

 

Also I am the real bear, u need 2 leave.

It was called open conflict and nobody wanted to play it cause you dont know who ur playing with and against. Oh wait those dist r still selectable taking up server resources that could be used to help the others perf better.

[Guest]

have any of you read the new tos

 

i recall there a section about dethreating

 

so now it's reportable

[TheMessiah 430]

So what this bear guy suggest?No idea.Must be option 2 anyway.If players want to play with friends different threat- they can play in open conflict.If players start to suicide,teamkill or whatever to lower theyr threat - kick him from dist. after the 3rd suicide/teamkill and maybe ban for couple of hours if persist.In simple words: Show recommended only tab in advanced option must stay checked all the time.Dat simple.Matchmaking is not dat broken

Edited June 9, 2018 by BingoBookBG

[Darkzero3802 611]

1 minute ago, NopeTooFast said:

have any of you read the new tos

 

i recall there a section about dethreating

 

so now it's reportable

Has that honestly stopped anyone before? Look at the ppl jump dashing with objectives to move it faster then u can run normally. Thats bug abuse and tech is reportable yet everyone does it and nobody got in trouble for it. Another example is glitching the obj into an area u cant get to, thats been done for yrs yet no suspensions were issued over it. Ppl r still guna dethreat cause its accepted and all their friends will overlook it. The only way to fix dethreating is to rework the threat system and untill thats done this will be an ongoing issue.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Darkzero3802 said:

Has that honestly stopped anyone before? Look at the ppl jump dashing with objectives to move it faster then u can run normally. Thats bug abuse and tech is reportable yet everyone does it and nobody got in trouble for it. Another example is glitching the obj into an area u cant get to, thats been done for yrs yet no suspensions were issued over it. Ppl r still guna dethreat cause its accepted and all their friends will overlook it. The only way to fix dethreating is to rework the threat system and untill thats done this will be an ongoing issue.

hm

[Darkzero3802 611]

3 minutes ago, NopeTooFast said:

hm

Theres a reason why you cant run with an obj and if RP, G1 and LO wanted you to move normally with the obj youd be able to run as u can without it

The same goes for threat, while G1 royally messed it up it boils down to ppl not wanting to play against similarly skilled ppl so they dethreat to roll over newbies. The threat system needs an overhaul that better reflects a persons ability to be lethal, harder to dethreat yet u can still lose threat when you legitly are outmatched. Untill these things are patched and the playerbase stops trying to cheat the system its ongoing.

[Guest]

yeah i've been constantly rolled over by dethreaters the last week

 

some were also running stabba just to rub it in

[MrChan 337]

Voted Option 4. Honestly, anyone who does otherwise is playing a different game.

Option 1: This isn't working as R255 Greens and the cohort of players who deliberately drop to Silver threat to play on Bronze districts demonstrate. The game isn't exactly newbie friendly as is, having xx420NoScope69xx who should be playing against veteran players stomp all over Bronze district doesn't help. And any game needs new players to remain viable.

Option 2: This was tried. People will tell you that Golds couldn't get matches and had to dethreat to join lower threat districts, but at least for Obeya, this is a fib. You could get matches, people just didn't like who their matches were against. "BAW!!! These QSing tryhards who run with the item are able to match my QS and running tactics!!! Unfair! I want to win all the time!!"
However, Obeya at the time was regularly over 1500 players. Even post LO and BattlEye, we don't have those numbers on Citadel & Jericho. It's also problematic for off-peak players or cross-threat teams and clans. So it's almost certainly not going to work now.

Option 3: This will not solve a damn thing, and will be seen as a punishment for having high threat and will encourage more dethreating.

 

That leaves us with:
Option 4: Rework the threat system. Anything else is a sticking plaster.

 

I'm not going to get into the mechanics of who should be what threat level, because I think our views of the skill distribution in the game are all coloured by what threat we are. As a Gold, I might think there's as big a gap between me and a top player as there is between a low Bronze and me, but that mighn't be necessarily true. 

 

My main suggestion is that threat would be best off hidden. Still there match-making in the background, but not visible to anyone. Not the most popular idea, I expect, and as much as I'd like to go back to a graduated system so I can track my own progress, the trade off in terms of both threat obsession ("Get outta my team you mere Gold 4 insect, I'm trying for Gold 10, I can't carry you!") and easier tracking of dethreating isn't worth it imo. With threat hidden, people won't decide their match is unfair before a shot is fired. You can't look at a Silver and instantly start trying to get him to TK you so you can kick him cos you don't want Silvers in your team. You can't track your intentional threat loss. You can't complain that you 'shouldn't be Gold' and then dethreat because you don't know that you are Gold. Want to go to a Bronze district to stomp lowbies? Oh wait, you can't. Because you can't see which districts are Bronze threat.

 

Of course for this to have a chance of working, there'd need to be a much greater effort to put similar threat players in the same districts so you get multiple different opponents instead of the same team or a couple different combinations of the same 7 players repeatedly. Enforced auto-join would ideal, but I don't think there's anyway to stop it accidentally dropping you in a nearly empty district once in a while, which rules it out. Maybe if instead of seeing every instance, it only showed you the three instances of WF & FN nearest you or your team's threat level that you could then pick from. (This assumes our recent pop increase will be sustained, obviously - if we go back to pre-LO levels then we might as well just ditch threat, cos there's no way to make it work with so few players) This would also stop people moving from district to district until they find one with the most low threat players to stomp on.

[Dopefish 248]

7 hours ago, Lislya said:

Option 3: Change the abiility to join lower threat districts only for GOLDS, so Bronzes/Silvers can jump between their threat districts and goldies gotta stay in the Gold ones.

This was attempted in the past, and which was led to the massive dethreatening, and consequently why gold districts are empty nowadays. It felt like a punishment to be locked away, and be the only ones that were restricted.

 

I'd disable the normal districts and go for Open Conflict only until they had time to rework the threat and matchmaking systems.

[BlatMan 711]

OP, why you hating on the golds?

 

Option 5: All districts are handled as Open Conflict districts with a few exceptions. The matchmaking system attempts to match teams based on number of opponents. 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, etc. If not possible it switches to matching teams with 1 player missing. If that's not possible, it matches anyone. Same applies to backup, but with a limit of 6 players per team.

[KRYINeelie 0]

Here was the competitiveness of the game, in my time it was quite difficult to get to gold 10 and the matchmaking worked better than now and without restriction of districts by threat

Edited June 9, 2018 by KRYINeelie

[Dasimoge 69]

1 hour ago, Dopefish said:

This was attempted in the past, and which was led to the massive dethreatening, and consequently why gold districts are empty nowadays. It felt like a punishment to be locked away, and be the only ones that were restricted.

 

I'd disable the normal districts and go for Open Conflict only until they had time to rework the threat and matchmaking systems.

Thanks for letting me know!

[Strado 12]

Remove threats totally, don't look at people's ranks, just play the game.

[Dasimoge 69]

1 minute ago, Strado said:

Remove threats totally, don't look at people's ranks, just play the game.

So you want more an "skill" based matchmaking?

Edited June 9, 2018 by Lislya

[Strado 12]

2 minutes ago, Lislya said:

So you want more an "skill" based matchmaking?

Well yes, sort of. Have the matchmaking match teams based upon a group's cumulative, hidden ELO. People just assume somebody is better simply because somebody has a different icon next to their name, even before the match starts. 

Another thing that needs to change is the community's mentality. People start calling out others as cheaters after losing one or two missions.

Instead of actually playing the game and learning on their mistakes, they just accept the outcome "because oppo was gold or high rank.", so maybe hiding everybody's threat and rank in the missions would work out better and people would concentrate on the game itself rather than flaming and bashing eachother.

[Dasimoge 69]

9 minutes ago, Strado said:

Well yes, sort of. Have the matchmaking match teams based upon a group's cumulative, hidden ELO. People just assume somebody is better simply because somebody has a different icon next to their name, even before the match starts. 

Another thing that needs to change is the community's mentality. People start calling out others as cheaters after losing one or two missions.

Instead of actually playing the game and learning on their mistakes, they just accept the outcome "because oppo was gold or high rank.", so maybe hiding everybody's threat and rank in the missions would work out better and people would concentrate on the game itself rather than flaming and bashing eachother.

A ELO Skill system like CS:GO?

So you mean getting ELO to get into a special "skill" rank?

Edited June 9, 2018 by Lislya

[Strado 12]

1 minute ago, Lislya said:

A ELO Skill system like CS:GO?

So you mean getting more ELO to get into a special "skill" rank?

I mean like. 1 player has let's say X amount of ELO, 2nd has Y and 3rd has Z. The MM would try to get opposition for them that's as close to X+Y+Z as possible. Actually, I don't even know. I just wish to take away the placebo effect of ranks and threats.

[Dasimoge 69]

Just now, Strado said:

I mean like. 1 player has let's say X amount of ELO, 2nd has Y and 3rd has Z. The MM would try to get opposition for them that's as close to X+Y+Z as possible. Actually, I don't even know. I just wish to take away the placebo effect of ranks and threats.

Yea like CS:GO actually

The ELO System gives you an OPP with the nearest ELO.

Like there is a tolerance about +-200 ELOP

[TheOppositePolarBear 93]

3 hours ago, UnawarePolarBear said:

Played the original RTW betas, and then the APB:Reloaded betas when Neume-boy was around.

 

Yup, that's exactly what happened.

 

They locked the threats to those spooled instances and it hit the population hard. They backpedaled quickly and made it to where Bronze stayed locked in bronze, and Golds could join the silver district as appropriate. 

 

When they changed to G1's threat system (expanded on the threats, changed the thresholds for being gold, and did some statistical changes to place folks, added trainee, etc) the de-threating issue seemed to increase exponentially. Primarily because a lot more folks were matched to gold and those who were "true golds" ran rampant on those folks.

 

Been this way ever since. Over the years we were promised the ideas of "cross-district matchmaking" and "hiding threat as an experiment" to see how these things would work, but they never did happen.

 

Also I am the real bear, u need 2 leave.

 

i would, but you'll be unaware of my presence soon enough =P

 

3 hours ago, BingoBookBG said:

So what this bear guy suggest?No idea.Must be option 2 anyway.If players want to play with friends different threat- they can play in open conflict.If players start to suicide,teamkill or whatever to lower theyr threat - kick him from dist. after the 3rd suicide/teamkill and maybe ban for couple of hours if persist.In simple words: Show recommended only tab in advanced option must stay checked all the time.Dat simple.Matchmaking is not dat broken

 

dear Bingo:

 

read the thread beafore giving your opinion. we talked for the most part about option 2.

 

if you cant be bothered to read the thread because you're a busy man playing bingo while reading books, let me summarize it for you:

 

option 2 has been tried. it almost killed the game.

 

regards, with lots of love, The Opposite Polar Bear

 

4 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

Option 1: Everything gotta stay as it is (Simple one).

Uhhh fuck no? This threat system is garbage and its too easy to get gold and doesnt properly reflect ones skillz.

Option 2: Removing the ability to join lower threat districts complettly.

Guna cause dethreating to get worse.

Option 3: Change the abiility to join lower threat districts only for GOLDS, so Bronzes/Silvers can jump between their threat districts and goldies gotta stay in the Gold ones.

That was tried once before and doing that is what CAUSED the dethreating problem so once again no it doesnt solve the problem.

Option 4: Rework the matchmaking / threat system.

Now thats a good idea. Rework it to make threats more accurate, higher threats are actually worth working for and use a system that makes it harder to dethreat yet u will lose threat accurately if u go past u skill range.

 

thank you :3 i really dont know exactly what kind of changes we need, but the whole thing needs to be reworked. 

 

i dont really think its a matter of -making it harder to dethreat-, but to -fix the reason why people dethreat in the first place-, i know we like to think of dethreaters as scrumbags who only likes to stump on newbies, but there are lots of players that get gold, go to a silver district, and then they proceed to get destroyed in the most obscene ways. they see how gold players with 5000+ hours in the game play, and they really dont feel like they deserve the gold status.

 

its the "non belongingness" of APB, you're too good to belong to the bronze district, yet too bad to belong to the silver one, so you eather suck it up and git gud, or you dethreat and go back to the dark whole you came from... i mean, you go back to the bronze district.

 

 

another thing we might(enfasis in "might", as i dont have much experience in what im about to say, and i also only have jericho experience, dont know how stuff is in the other side of the atlantic) need to pay attention to, is the "skill culture" generated by the segregation of the playerbase in different districts (did i sound too SJW?) let me explain:

 

both silver and bronze district uses different standards to rule who is gold and who is silver. i havent played too much in the bronze district, but from what i've been able to see, regular gold dethreaters that plays mostly in the bronze district are a LOT worst than regular silvers that plays in the silver district.

 

its like APB threat system goes like this: bronze -> silver(bronze district) -> gold (bronze district) -> silver (silver district) -> gold(silver district)

 

 

i wonder if unaware is aware of this little messenge over here :3