Azarael wrote:- It's a scenario queue, not a scenario pool - priority is given to those who queued first to preserve the important Queue Time element
If you would use my idea of letting queues pop every X amount of minutes (which you could make dependent on the current population), I guess you would call that a scenario pool (considering it treats players independently of their queue time). Is it not possible to make a scenario pool that also uses time queued as a variable? The advantage of a scenario pool is that it is easier to make more balanced scenario groups. What it does mean is that if there are too many people queueing for the DPS role, a DPS-player would have a longer queue time than the other roles. This could be partly sorted by giving players information of how many players of which role are queueing (or have queued in the past X amount of minutes). If you see there is an overload of DPS, you might want to relog to another role if you have the possibility to do so. Obviously the downside of making a scenario pool and adding another variable is that the matchmaking systems gets more complicated. Whether that is too complicated or not is not for me to decide. I’m just trying to see what options there are
Azarael wrote: - For both sides, try every unique combination (i.e. NOT permutation) of group sizes which add up to a number between 2 and the maximum player spots left in the scenario, using the first available groups in each sublist and prioritizing combinations with the highest individual value for size
This is the part which increases the chance that premades face off against each other rather than against pugs if I understand correctly. But if there are a lot of people queueing, the algorithm probably finds a way to have a scenario the moment a premade queues. And there are good chances that if there are a lot of solo players (or smaller groups) that 6-man premades don’t fight a lot against each other. Going back to the point of having a scenario pool. I guess it would be much easier to prioritize 6-man premades against other 6-man premades. What other options would there be to make it more likely that 6-mans fight off other 6-mans?
Azarael wrote:The scenario manager algorithm attempts to balance roles only when adding solo players. I'm planning to refine this a little for groups, both by using the composition of a group as a weight when adding to the queue (to ensure that for example a 3 DPS group is prioritized below a balanced group) and by ensuring that the composition which comes closest to resolving any existing role imbalance in a scenario is used for a given player count fill slot, rather than the composition which includes the highest number of players in an individual group.
I think both these changes would be good improvements to the match-making system. I do believe that 6 man groups should be ignored by those rules as 1) they don’t have to be punished for running anything else than the most balanced 2-2-2 setup and 2) as they form a full group, they cannot really balance the other group. The latter isn’t completely true, you can obviously throw some heals to the other group and maybe a 3 dps 6-man premade goes better with a second group which has relatively more tanks and healers, but I don’t believe it is significant enough to take into account.
Azarael wrote:A [6] is very likely to be balanced, whereas a [2, 2, 2] could easily be composed of 5 DPS and a healer who are trying to dodge the solo queue logic which is weighted against the large numbers of DPS.
This should be fixed when you add in the changes above right?
A point made by Danielle was to adept the match-making to the current server population, making it have more/higher match-making criteria when there are more players queueing and fewer/lower criteria when there are less players on the server. Is this something you could consider possible and/or advantageous? I guess it isn’t very hard to implement. Have several criteria lists (algorithms) and relate them to a certain population (maybe even per tier?).
Azarael wrote:zumos2 wrote:Another issue I see is people leaving pops because they know who they are facing. I don’t know the reason why the RoR-team made it so you can see who you are facing when the queue pops, but I think it would be better without it. Making a good matchmaking system when people just leave when they see hard opposition is never going to work. And that is exactly what I would like to see: a good match-making system. I’m not an expert in this, but I think there are definitely opportunities in making a good matchmaking system.
This was debug text for my benefit that I never got around to removing. It appears if a scenario pops with at least one group having been matched. It can be removed if it is causing issues.
For me it makes no sense that you can see beforehand who you are facing and have the option to leave based on that. It goes against the principle of a scenario: you don’t know who you will be fighting. Yes there is a risk if you queue solo that you face a premade. There is also a good chance that you fight equals. Pugs will always choose the easiest way to get rewards if given the option. So they will just leave and requeue when they see the names of a known premade. If I queue solo I would do the same after I lost several fights against the same premade. I cannot blame them, yet it is frustrating to be in almost empty scenarios. Even more so for those who did join. I’m also afraid that even if we would have a perfect match-making system, some will still choose to leave if they see known premades.