Matchmaking and Extiction of middle threat levels.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Just now, Rade said:

But you do it anyway because its not your fault the matchmaking system is broken and you dont want to lose your gold threat. If threat didnt exist people like you may not be so try hard on newbies / not so good players because you would have nothing to lose. Equally if we had a working matchmaking, you would never be up against newbies / not so good players. I still maintain the concept of matchmaking in general doesnt help players get better it just divides the good from the not so good and we dress it up under the label of creating a fair playing environment.

Why would I care about my threat when I've never not been gold and the matchmaker has me so set at gold that I could lose 100 games in a row and still probably not drop to silver.

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, Rade said:

But you do it anyway because its not your fault the matchmaking system is broken and you dont want to lose your gold threat. If threat didnt exist people like you may not be so try hard on newbies / not so good players because you would have nothing to lose. Equally if we had a working matchmaking, you would never be up against newbies / not so good players. I still maintain the concept of matchmaking in general doesnt help players get better it just divides the good from the not so good and we dress it up under the label of creating a fair playing environment.

i “stomp” low skill players because the alternative is literally to afk - there is no other way for me (and many other veteran players) to play a mission as intended and perform below silver level

 

its not about ego or losing threat, the skill gap is just so large that even my casual, for-fun gameplay ends up as a stomp

 

if it’s any consolation for you, when choosing between logging in to vs bronzes 2/3 matches or not launching the game at all, i choose not launching the game 

 

matchmaking isn’t supposed to make players better, i have no idea where you got that idea - matchmaking is supposed to create more fair matchups

 

matchmaking and elo are absolutely necessary for nearly any pvp game, like i’ve already said it’s not fun for either side when the skill gap is too large

[Kewlin 692]

6 hours ago, Rade said:

Its your choice to destroy them or not. What you could do is help them learn. I take myself as an example, in FC I try not to kill bronze or trainees. In missions I go easy and let them win and help them.

 

Your problem is you have a very polarised view, ie I destroy anyone with lower skill or I dont want to play with them. This is what makes you toxic.

2 hours ago, Rade said:

But you do it anyway because its not your fault the matchmaking system is broken and you dont want to lose your gold threat. If threat didnt exist people like you may not be so try hard on newbies / not so good players because you would have nothing to lose. Equally if we had a working matchmaking, you would never be up against newbies / not so good players. I still maintain the concept of matchmaking in general doesnt help players get better it just divides the good from the not so good and we dress it up under the label of creating a fair playing environment.

 

I've come back from the grave, just to tell you this is one of the worst takes I've ever seen on the APB forums, and that's saying a lot.

 

I don't give a single fuck about my threat. I dethreated to Silver learning ALIG back in the day after doing awful for like, a hundred games in a row, and what did I do? I just. . . swapped to a gun that I knew how to play, and got Gold back in a couple games. Not particularly because I wanted Gold, but because I didn't want to be mean to Silvers by fucking them over. Yes, I eventually learned to play ALIG well, I just really didn't understand the weapon at all at first.

 

Because the honest truth is, I cannot conceive of how to play poorly enough that it would be fair to face Silvers on equal numbers, even as a low-gold, maybe gold 4, IDK. It's just not fun to fight Silvers unless it's a bunch of them, and that's not even talking about Bronzes. I play games to have fun and challenge myself while exploring creative gameplay, not to babysit and fill in coloring books while a bronze tries to land hits on me going full-auto with his N-Tec at 50m.

And, unpopular opinion: throwing matches when you fight bronzes is abusive behavior, because it gives them an artificially higher threat which makes them face opponents they shouldn't be facing.

[Rade 54]

In relation to the other parts of your post, another cool story bro.

1 hour ago, Kewlin said:

 

And, unpopular opinion: throwing matches when you fight bronzes is abusive behavior, because it gives them an artificially higher threat which makes them face opponents they shouldn't be facing.

 

In my book helping players get better is the morally right and common sense option that is a billion times better than wiping them out or going afk.

[Kewlin 692]

You're not helping them get better. Unless you're actively taking them under your wing, they can only help themselves.

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, Rade said:

In relation to the other parts of your post, another cool story bro.

In my book helping players get better is the morally right and common sense option that is a billion times better than wiping them out or going afk.

what is a bronze learning while i run circles around him with my weapons unequipped? is spending 20 minutes shooting at enemies but never getting a kill less frustrating than getting min ttk'd for 5 minutes? are bronzes okay with a pity win now making future matches even more unfair?

 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by glaciers

[iRawwwN 283]

1 hour ago, Rade said:

In relation to the other parts of your post, another cool story bro.

In my book helping players get better is the morally right and common sense option that is a billion times better than wiping them out or going afk.

I'll make sure to send this to every bronze & silver i frag in game.

 

[skerblerd 24]

I've always been convinced that Silvers have to have been lobotomized to be so bad at the game. I've made alts and legit try to throw games and still end up as gold somehow. You legit have to have no spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination to end up as silver. Gold is literally the standard of APB. Sorry but it's the truth. 

[Revoluzzer 274]

 

On 10/17/2022 at 2:11 AM, glaciers said:

On 10/17/2022 at 2:06 AM, Drischa said:

Something I assume is that threat levels balance themselves to the active population. Let's say that all the non-gold players disappeared from the game, and only gold players were being matched. The lower half of the gold players would lose to the higher half, so would their threat eventually become silver and then bronze to represent where they are in the current mix of players? Or would they all remain above the non-playing playerbase as golds?

Yes this is a thinly veiled excuse of "but players are more hardcore now!" for me going silver lol

the threat system is not dynamic so it does not automatically adjust to an arbitrary "active population", iirc g1 has had to manually reset the threat category percentages 3 times over the course of apb's life 

They never had to manually adjust threat levels. It was just another band-aid "fix" to "improve" matchmaking (or at the very least make players feel like they did something to that effect). Naturally the system re-adjusted (or corrected) itself within the span of weeks.

 

Having skill levels dynamically adjusted to the active population might be an actual improvement, though. Combine this with districts also adjusting their assigned district threat based on the district population and then always sorting players into the best suited districts automatically (i.e. no manual district selection) and one might even end up with a decent matchmaking-situation. This was, mind you, what they advertised way back in the day (when only 15 threat levels existed and TL15 player were permanently marked on the map). Only caveat: Districts spun up with some assigned threat range, but never adjusted to the population. So over time (and players manually joining the more populated districts) the assigned threat level became entirely meaningless.

 

On 10/18/2022 at 3:01 PM, Yapopal said:

The matchmaking system has a ceiling that can be broken through. After that, the selection of the enemy does not work correctly.

This is probably correct in the sense that Gold 10 is a hard limit, even if the Glicko-values might not be limited.

If matchmaking is based on threat levels, there is a hard ceiling beyond which matchmaking becomes funky.

If matchmaking is based on glicko values, there is no hard ceiling and matchmaking can still work properly.

 

Of course now we're also talking about a mechanic beyond threat / skill calculation, which is the actual matchmaking process itself.

Naturally the matchmaking system will try to find the best match for your skill level (e.g. you are Silver 8 so it starts looking for Silver 8 opponents). It is unlikely that a perfect match exists, so it might start out with a bit of leeway (e.g. Silver 7-9). With a pool of no more than 40-50 opponents to chose from at best, it can be very unlikely for such an opponent to be available on short notice. So, in order to keep your wait-times low, the matchmaking-system will relax the requirements. After, say, 15 seconds it will look for Silver 6-10, after 30 seconds it will look for any combination of opponents that will roughly equal Silver 7-9. After 45 seconds it might look for any combination that's close to Silver 6-10 (which might be a Gold and a Bronze). And so it goes until pretty much anyone in the district qualifies, some extreme edge cases excluded, maybe.

It's not ideal, but it is a legitimate solution to keep matchmaking-times at a reasonable level. And it works well, as long as all players in one district are roughly in the same threat-range. Which they are currently not, because there are not enough players at the moment. And which they were not in the past, because players manually joined the most populated districts instead of the most appropriate ones.

Restricting districts to a certain colour did not help, by the way, because a Silver 10 is closer to a Gold 1 than a Silver 1.

 

Circling back to your original point once more: If the threat levels are distributed roughly in the way I hypothesised, it is very unlikely that any significant number of players is in the Gold 8-10 range. If there are any at all in the current state of the population.

 

On 10/20/2022 at 7:36 PM, Kewlin said:

And, unpopular opinion: throwing matches when you fight bronzes is abusive behavior, because it gives them an artificially higher threat which makes them face opponents they shouldn't be facing.

While this is technically correct, the threat-system should account for it by lowering its confidence in situations like this.

Just like you bounced right back to Gold after your ALIG-escapades because you had not only lowered your threat, but also the threat-systems confidence in your threat level.

 

So unless you keep getting matched against the same bronze players repeatedly, you wouldn't impact their threat-situation long-term.

[BlatMan 711]

22 hours ago, skerblerd said:

I've always been convinced that Silvers have to have been lobotomized to be so bad at the game. I've made alts and legit try to throw games and still end up as gold somehow. You legit have to have no spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination to end up as silver. Gold is literally the standard of APB. Sorry but it's the truth. 

Case and point, MACKxBOLAN is somehow silver.

[Drischa 6]

23 hours ago, skerblerd said:

I've always been convinced that Silvers have to have been lobotomized to be so bad at the game. I've made alts and legit try to throw games and still end up as gold somehow. You legit have to have no spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination to end up as silver. Gold is literally the standard of APB. Sorry but it's the truth. 

A few years ago I'd agree with this post, but I feel the playerbase has been shrunk down enough to such a dedicated base that it's harder than it used to be.

Could just be that my coordination is shot from not playing for years though.
Now that I think about it, could it be that silvers are more of a true representation of what silver should be now that they can't hide in bronze districts and actually have to fight to maintain their rank? Feels like I've seen quite a lot of rank changing compared to what I used to as well, even in my short amount of recent playtime.

4 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

Having skill levels dynamically adjusted to the active population might be an actual improvement, though.

In my post I didn't mean the system changing the percentages etc - I more meant that if you remove a portion of the playerbase then there are still going to be higher and lower players, and the lower players will eventually lose enough to the higher ones that they wouldn't be able to maintain gold, even if they could before, so you'd never truly "lose" silvers like the OP suggests.

[Kewlin 692]

8 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

While this is technically correct, the threat-system should account for it by lowering its confidence in situations like this.

Just like you bounced right back to Gold after your ALIG-escapades because you had not only lowered your threat, but also the threat-systems confidence in your threat level.

 

So unless you keep getting matched against the same bronze players repeatedly, you wouldn't impact their threat-situation long-term.

Fair enough, and probably accurate.

For what it's worth, it's not like I fucking stomp the bastards. I'll often try less hard and use stupid weapons, but I'm not going to try to play like shit.

[Queen of Love 453]

15 hours ago, Drischa said:

players will eventually lose enough to the higher ones that they wouldn't be able to maintain gold, even if they could before, so you'd never truly "lose" silvers like the OP suggests.

But you truly lose players.

[Drischa 6]

5 hours ago, Queen of Love said:

But you truly lose players.

I mean, my point was assuming that the players are already lost, playerbase going down is a natural thing for all but the luckiest of online games. Players leaving would be the cause not the effect.

[Queen of Love 453]

On 10/24/2022 at 12:58 AM, Drischa said:

I mean, my point was assuming that the players are already lost, playerbase going down is a natural thing for all but the luckiest of online games. Players leaving would be the cause not the effect.

That's a good point.
Less players means more unbalance or more umbalance creates less playerbase?
I guess the second type begin the corrossion.

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Queen of Love
Z

[gremlen 18]

Even with a high population the current matchmaking system is not fair for silvers. If we would have 10 full financial district copies there’s such a small chance that the copy you joined to play will have the same skill level players on opposite faction. The problem is an outdated limitation of amount of players you can compete with and the best solution is to make cross instance matchmaking to be able to get opposition from all district copies on go without loading time.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

3 hours ago, gremlen said:

Even with a high population the current matchmaking system is not fair for silvers. If we would have 10 full financial district copies there’s such a small chance that the copy you joined to play will have the same skill level players on opposite faction. The problem is an outdated limitation of amount of players you can compete with and the best solution is to make cross instance matchmaking to be able to get opposition from all district copies on go without loading time.

Your first sentence contradicts the rest of your post??????????

[Mitne 724]

And people still wonder what I meant when I said game population killed this game.

Yeah. G1 did it part but it's players who weren't any better than them that keep throwing the rocks.

[Noob_Guardian 417]

On 8/9/2022 at 2:19 AM, Queen of Love said:

I got this explaination years ago, neither sure if is true, but could be pretty near.
Which is Exactly the Threat System Working?

 

There used to bel a background 1-10 system, not sure what it is now. Your threat and rank is determined by the last like 20-30 missions you've played. If you're top 50% in the match it goes up, bottom 50% in score it goes down. Losing with a good score prevents threat degradation. But that's all I know anymore.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Noob_Guardian

[gremlen 18]

13 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Your first sentence contradicts the rest of your post??????????

Why?

[SK4LP 62]

if the playerbase is the problem

one thing which could fix atm, is just to make backup on auto mode until we have a minus of 5vs5 or 6vs6 ... and after let balance work

and remove all dis non sens 1vs1 or 2vs2 mission .... i love this 1vs1 15min vip mission ^^

[Revoluzzer 274]

On 10/27/2022 at 10:05 PM, gremlen said:

If we would have 10 full financial district copies there’s such a small chance that the copy you joined to play will have the same skill level players on opposite faction.

True, because everyone manually joins districts.

Letting the game decide which district it puts you in should prevent this. Although colour-locked districts mean that system is either disabled these days or severely handicapped.

 

On 10/28/2022 at 6:33 AM, Noob_Guardian said:

Your threat and rank is determined by the last like 20-30 missions you've played. If you're top 50% in the match it goes up, bottom 50% in score it goes down. Losing with a good score prevents threat degradation. But that's all I know anymore.

You need to update your knowledge, then, because those things are very much incorrect.

[BlatMan 711]

All I know is there's too much of a skill imbalance because threat doesn't come close to matching your overall skill level. I'm not sure how to fix that without rewriting the threat system. A few of my friends are currently borderline gold threat but often they play like new bronze players. Their callouts are more than 5 seconds behind the action. They'll say 2 players are rushing me, but I've already killed both players and finished reloading with extended mag. I don't get it, how are they not bronze?

[CookiePuss 5378]

13 hours ago, BlatMan said:

All I know is there's too much of a skill imbalance because threat doesn't come close to matching your overall skill level. I'm not sure how to fix that without rewriting the threat system. A few of my friends are currently borderline gold threat but often they play like new bronze players. Their callouts are more than 5 seconds behind the action. They'll say 2 players are rushing me, but I've already killed both players and finished reloading with extended mag. I don't get it, how are they not bronze?

Sounds like they have been playing against players less skilled than them. The only way you go up in threat is finishing in the top half of the scoreboard. Your friends have been doing that.

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by CookiePuss

[vsb 6171]

16 hours ago, BlatMan said:

All I know is there's too much of a skill imbalance because threat doesn't come close to matching your overall skill level. I'm not sure how to fix that without rewriting the threat system. A few of my friends are currently borderline gold threat but often they play like new bronze players. Their callouts are more than 5 seconds behind the action. They'll say 2 players are rushing me, but I've already killed both players and finished reloading with extended mag. I don't get it, how are they not bronze?

it’s easier to upthreat than dethreat due to poorly balanced score awards and anti dethreater mechanics g1 implemented, and threat percentages are not dynamic so there’s no limit on how many players can be gold