this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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I'd like multiplayer a lot more if they still made games with user-driven match making, instead of opaque algorithms hellbent on ensuring that everyone maintains a perfect 50/50 win rate. That and the death of custom game modes/lobbies have really killed all the fun of online multiplayer.
As much as that may be true for you, on average people enjoy MP games with SBMM more than without by a decent margin. Studies have shown that people play more matches and play longer sessions when SBMM creates more balanced matches.
You absolutely certain about that reasoning? Because from what I've seen, when automated matchmaking is used, you NEED to play the game like a job just to reach your "correct" ranking and actually enjoy the game. People who don't play it like that are driven away because of it.
Yes, I am.
This is just one study I could find quickly but the results are consistent.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/activision-secretly-experimented-on-50-of-call-of-duty-players-by-decreasing-skill-based-matchmaking-and-determined-players-like-sbmm-even-if-they-don-t-know-it/
This is not accurate. Most people's ELOs don't shift much after settling into your "natural" rank, which should happen after about 50 matches or so. Probably what you're referring to is the publicly available "rank" which is per "season", wherein every few months your rank gets reset. This is FAR less opaque than SBMM but results in lower playtime and lower retention for casual players who don't want to be grinding the 50 matches to settle at their ELO every 3 months.
Actual opaque SBMM (the algorithm you mentioned originally) that never resets creates, on average, much more fun MP experiences for most people.
Ehm, 50 matches seems like a lot to me. Especially if they aren't enjoyable (yet) because of flawed matchmaking.
I pulled that number out of my bootyhole because I knew it was a safe bet for a stable ELO.
US Chess Federation uses 25 games as your provisional ELO stage, many video games will use 10 matches. Assuming a large enough variety of ELO in the player base, you can be confident your ELO is mostly accurate after a shockingly small number of matches.
Would be interesting to see but I would assume most people won't even make it to 10 matches in a game they don't enjoy. The people who spend thousands of hours on a single game are a tiny minority of the tiny minority of people who have the free time to play dozens of a hours a week.
If you can't make it 10 matches in a new game, I don't think SBMM is your problem with the game.
10 matches should be like, between 3-10 hours. Assuming an hour a night, you'll be approximately ranked for SBMM within a week.
10 hours is a huge time investment in a game that feels like shit to play.
Do you understand why people play games though?
Warcraft 3 multiplayer was peak "matchmaking" in my opinion, where people created lobbies with certain rule sets and anyone who was interested in that type of game could just join directly. It was a blast, playing lots of different game modes all the time and meeting a wide range of player types, instead of having to invest an insane amount of time (3-10 hours, vs less than a minute to find a game in WC3) into one single game mode even before you can actually start playing.
What you have described is exactly what I was talking about when I called it "playing the game like a job," where you have to invest plenty of time before you can even hope to enjoy it.
I understand why I do. I can't speak to your motivations, I'm not you. I can, however, point to studies that discuss groups of people's preferences in aggregate, as I have done. You're an outlier, and that's ok! Play what you want how you want!
SBMM is, unfortunately for you, the current utilitarian optimal for multiplayer PvP gaming. It maximizes both adoption and retention metrics, as well as self-reported enjoyment scores (Likert scale) for the highest number of people. Bummer that it doesn't optimize for you, but the other good part is that there are plenty of games that still support custom lobbies. Find one you like and have fun!
You are never going to answer that question with math and statistics, and attempts to do so are exactly why the industry keeps tanking studio after studio.
Warcraft 3's custom games were a mess, people left all the time which made team games irritating as hell, and the skill level varied widely from one game to the next so half the games ended up with feeders and a stomping one way or the other.