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Discussion about player level separation



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Poll: Discussion about player level separation (83 member(s) have cast votes)

Do you think this is...

  1. A good idea! (55 votes [66.27%])

    Percentage of vote: 66.27%

  2. Neutral. (11 votes [13.25%])

    Percentage of vote: 13.25%

  3. A bad idea! (17 votes [20.48%])

    Percentage of vote: 20.48%

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#1 peaches

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Posted 31 August 2014 - 10:56 PM

G'day mates,

The reason I request this discussion is because as there are people who feel there are not-as-good players ruining the more advanced lobbies; there is another side where extremely good players who just go lobbystomp the not-as-good players.

Some initial proposals I have are:

  1. A ranking system tracking aggregated stats from logs.tf based on the users SteamID and possibly IP address (IP being kept private) and public logs (logs.tf) only generated from TF2Center servers. Rank would based on points scored, K/D or A/D (for medic), advantages both held and lost, DPS*, overall team performance if you can track that, and overall win/loss ratio.

    1a.          There needs to be a way to rank players in a system like the one you are trying to create. Especially with the prospected release of advanced and casual lobbies, as well as the projected size of this community overall. I read that you have over 55,000 unique players logged now, that is a large number.

    1b.          *I reccomend DPS because I feel DPS will be a better indicator of how well a player actually performs versus damage dealt. A player could get a good spike of damage dealt in chokepoints or off of a Kritz but perform more poorly overall in dealing damage. This also needs to take into account a baseline of desired stats for any given class. i.e. buildings sapped as spy, important picks as sniper, charges given as medic, etc. 
     
  2. Discourage, very heavily, the use of alternative accounts, maybe even going as far as making this a bannable offense (for the alt) or for their main account (for repeat offenders)

    2a.          I understand this may be a hard one to deal with because TF2 is free, but it also sets a standard of what is and is not acceptable in the community, as a whole. Smurfing is a an immature practice, and should be frowned upon. The limit already imposed on hours played would make this relatively easy to deal with after the initial phase of weeding out those who already do this.
     
  3. Allow players to report the other player(s) for "frowned upon" behaviors

    3a.          I will use this as an example. Yes, I understand this particular match is an isolated example but it is a certainly an example of how extreme this can get. The sniper rawr completely dominated the entire match. By the end of the match, he had 6 dominations, double the score of second highest scoring player on their team, and overall a 9:1 KDR. That is unheard of in any competitive games across the board. People like naknak, who is extremely good and joined that match late, come into lobbies with less skilled players. They have absolutely no reason to be playing matches like this. I mean no disrespect by that, they are incredibly good players, but it ruins the game for anyone playing when they play far below their skill level. The enemy team and their team included. It feels like nobody gets to participate, because you are struggling simply to make any moves possible.
     
  4. Despite the launch of Advanced Lobbies, still implement a cap on who can join based on lobbies and hours played. Also, in the same vein is imposition of ranks.

    4a.           Hypothetically, if ranks were to be imposed, they should not be rigid. This allows lobby creators to still have freedom  on who they really want in their lobby and still giving the community the chance to be all-inclusive. When you lose all of the time, it is no longer fun to even be involved in communities like this because there is no room for growth. This also may very well make new players feel more confident in joining certain lobbies which have low caps, as they will not look at peoples hours/lobbies and be scared off by the fact that certain members of this community have played the game an incredible amount.

In closing, I strongly believe it will create a stronger sense of respect and responsibility for the players; and a better sense of community overall. It will encourage players to stay in/around their skill bracket, allowing new players to grow to be better. With that comes encouragement everyone to become better players and people so that they can advance in the community. This gives players an opportunity to get a feel for what the people of this community can truly acheive as individual players, and a team. It gives people something to strive for. I do not know the amount of work that would be required to code a system like this, so if anyone has an idea an honest estimate would be good to have. Also, this is all obviously open for discussion.


Edited by TheMattgician, 01 September 2014 - 04:36 PM.
Changed Title from "A serious discussion about a few things"

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#2 TheMattgician

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Posted 01 September 2014 - 04:49 PM

1. A good ranking system is way more difficult than you would thing. Luckily, it turns out Gentleman Jon has been on it and made something quite good, based on ELO. This would only apply to Advanced lobbies, but it's not even considered yet because we first need to make the basis of the Advanced lobbies work flawlessly. Gentleman Jon has done some statistics about what to measure, but this won't be published, for good reason.

 

2. It's very difficult to prove if someone is on an alt. Secondly, pro players get insta-banned from lobbies because they have a lot of hours. They're people too.

 

3. What's frowned upon here? You aren't allowed to play well? I understand that it's not fun to play against such a sniper, but TF2C won't ban players for being good. Additionally, it's not necessarily a waste of time, you can learn how to deal with the other team's sniper being good.

 

4. The userbase of advanced lobbies will be more or less handpicked. That'll help.

 

Sadly we cannot control people. Although we could advertise sportsmanship and sense of community, it would be practically ineffective. I can't see many people paying attention to that, especially the people for whom we are advertising for.

Just the Advanced lobbies itself is very complex. There is no public release date because it's hard to make a realistic one.



#3 Luop90

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Posted 02 September 2014 - 03:30 AM

I disagree on #3. No reason to ban/report someone simply because of their skill.


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#4 fraac

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Posted 02 September 2014 - 06:02 AM

Any progress on anything like this, ever, would be excellent.



#5 ninjaMooCow

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Posted 02 September 2014 - 10:54 PM

Peaches,

 

>> Discourage, very heavily, the use of alternative accounts, maybe even going as far as making this a bannable offense (for the alt) or for their main

>> account (for repeat offenders)

 

How to?  IMO we need to watch being too strict against high hour players, since that just increases pressure to alt.
 



#6 withadancenumber

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Posted 03 September 2014 - 07:22 AM

I know I don't speak for everyone, but i've been kicked multiple times for having a lot of hours. (people fearing ill bring imbalance). I can totally understand why some people would play on an alt. Hopefully you guys get something decent worked out for some of the better players on tf2c


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#7 naknak

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Posted 19 September 2014 - 11:34 AM

I'm a little late here but since you used my name I'm going to respond anyway.
 

People like naknak, who is extremely good and joined that match late, come into lobbies with less skilled players. They have absolutely no reason to be playing matches like this.


I was a sub in that game so I didn't get to see the teams. Had I seen them I would have said they didn't look bad. Going by numbers, one team has the edge in 3 slots while the other team has the edge in 6 slots, with the medics being reasonably close. The sniper was carrying but that's not a given from his lobby/hour numbers alone. Given the choice, I would have been happy to join either team.

Secondly: for a long time, I made restriction lobbies, to keep newer players out. They took forever to fill (discussed to death in other threads, short version: restriction lobbies have filling problems over and above those created by the restrictions themselves), attracted all kinds of hate (see also: mikengo) and often got closed for being open too long.

Thirdly, I'm on the wrong end of a stack more often than you think. I wish every game could be extremely close and fun but I think you'd need 10x as many players to make it happen (and a really good ranking system which is a hard problem in itself). We're all expecting great things from advanced lobbies. But while "minimum skill" is easy, "equal skill" is not.

My approach to a stacked-against-me lobby is to adjust my expectations and set realistic goals, like "I won't get dominated by their sniper" or "I'll maintain a 1.5 KA/D." It's not my favourite kind of game but I can either make the most of it or start ragequitting left and right, which I refuse to do.

Regarding alts, I will say I'm tired of these zero-hour, zero-season snipers running 2 headshots per minute. I once heard some UGC plat leader say that the size of the platinum division is limited by the number of good snipers, yet tf2c somehow has an unlimited supply of world-class sniping talent. It sucks and is probably unsolvable without a lot of draconian rules that would be widely disliked.
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#8 b33p

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Posted 19 September 2014 - 02:27 PM

a) Don't punish people for playing well. I can't believe this has to be said.

 

2) You don't have to ban alts if you require players to get an ETF2L account.


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#9 The Once and Future King

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Posted 19 September 2014 - 02:55 PM

a) Don't punish people for playing well. I can't believe this has to be said.

 

2) You don't have to ban alts if you require players to get an ETF2L account.

 

Why require an account a majority of the user-base won't use anyway?



#10 naknak

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Posted 19 September 2014 - 02:57 PM

2) You don't have to ban alts if you require players to get an ETF2L account.


Creating an ETF2L involves an openid signin and the account is made instantly. It does nothing to stop alts.

Supposedly, ETF2L's crack alt detection squad will catch up with you someday. If you never play in the league then they have nothing to go on except IP and browser details, info that TF2C already has anyway.

#11 b33p

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Posted 28 September 2014 - 07:05 PM

In the EU it is a fairly big deal, because it's the only league worth playing in and if you're banned for alts then you're fucked in terms of comp play.

 

For everywhere else though, it's probably pretty pointless.



#12 Faded

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Posted 15 December 2014 - 10:13 PM

I think a ranking system like cs:go or dota should be added.It would make tf2center more competitive and not people leaving mid game or saying oh it's just a pug.


Edited by Mother Tereza, 16 December 2014 - 08:08 PM.
Merged with original thread


#13 TheMattgician

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Posted 16 December 2014 - 04:10 PM

http://forums.tf2cen...vanced-lobbies/

It's being worked on, mostly independently by GentlemanJon. I will say this: it is not nearly as easy as you might think.



#14 Mother Tereza

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 03:08 AM

Gentleman Jon has been done a great work in analysis and research of ranking system. Currently he is intending to launch a standalone site to analyze players performance based on game logs and to rank players using the acquired data. Go there and help him find an appropriate naming system for a ranks.



#15 meloklasm

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 03:03 PM

I don't know if this is feasible to implement, since I'm not a developer. So I understand if it gets declined.

 

In Competitive TF2, each teams' skill is somewhat matched, because they move up in division if they perform well. But in Pub and Lobby TF2, the skill of each team is made up randomly. Most of the time, this isn't a problem, but occasionally, one team will get completely out-stacked with no hope to make anything happen, which can be demoralising.

 

In light of this, I'm suggesting an implementation of some sort of skill-rating system that prevents people from stacking lobbies. As I said, I'm not a developer, but perhaps each person could be given a value that moves up/down every game according to their performance (or since TF2 is a team game, the performance of the whole team), and then when a lobby is created, an algorithm tries to match the "total value" of each team. This would perhaps mean that individuals simply join lobbies, instead of joining Red or Blu.

 

Thanks for reading


Edited by TheMattgician, 17 December 2014 - 05:00 PM.
Merged Threads; Original Title: "Skillrating/matchmaking"


#16 fraac

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 04:24 PM

Does tf2center plan to use Jon's site?



#17 kKaltUu

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 06:47 PM

Does tf2center plan to use Jon's site?

too soon to tell, there hasn't been any tangible work available atm. 



#18 fraac

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 07:05 PM

Has tf2center given up on solving this problem?



#19 kKaltUu

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 09:36 PM

Has tf2center given up on solving this problem?

Not at all, and especially if jon's site works I'd reckon we're the first to jump in.

It's a matter of priorities of TF2Center projects. We've got some big stuff coming in.



#20 MasterNoob

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Posted 17 December 2014 - 09:54 PM

Only one dev working on TF2C right now; things need time ;-)







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