Many of the frustrations with Player versus Player modes in SWTOR (e.g., this post on the SWTOR forums) and many other MMOs stems primarily from mixing players with different gameplay motivations. Usually players complain about premade teams having too much of an advantage over solo players getting put into random teams, but this is not actually the root cause.
Mixing players with different motivations is the primary cause of PvP dissatisfaction.
Players are motivated by rewards. Change the rewards to change their behavior.
Players, especially in PvP, are notorious for trying to find shortcuts to rewards. For example, if PvP matches always dropped a "good" reward (e.g., exclusive to PvP), even if it is a low quantity for a loss, they might very well just throw matches in order to get these rewards with low effort.
In this article we recommend a system of Leagues to naturally separate different players by their motivations. In a League system, players who are more genuinely interested in PvP steadily move into different Tiers. Here are the key points:
- SWTOR's current system of a mere distinction between Unranked and Ranked is NOT a League system. You might never win a match and still eventually qualify for Ranked through sheer repetition to get enough Valor points to qualify for Ranked. Any system that increases your rating even if you lose too many matches will ultimately give you lopsided matches and also facilitate loss-farming exploits (losing matches just to collect superior rewards in Ranked).
- Different degrees of interest in PvP is allowed. "Casuals" and even players who just want to complete missions but have no real interest in PvP have their own League -- and are separated from players who are more serious and/or skilled.
- The most important part of a League system is players must only be matched against players of the same League. Even if this means there are no valid matches. We can nevertheless make some accommodation for Leagues that have a very low population.
- When players win more matches, they are put into a higher Tier. If they start to lose matches again they will move back to a lower Tier. The objective of a League will be to put players where hopefully they have a 50-50 chance of winning their matches.
Of course even a League system will not work flawlessly, as Illusion Connect's Ares' Battlefield has shown. There are many factors outside of anyone's control that are not "exploits" or other attempts to manipulate the system. A strong player who enters the system late will have to go through a lot of unbalanced matches in their favor, resulting in "bad matchups". A lot depends on active, regular participation, and early in the introduction of Leagues, these unbalanced matches have to be expected until most players get sorted into the proper Leagues.
First we will discuss the various League Tiers -- what the population will likely stabilize into.
Then we will consider various concessions and possible exploits of a League system run without manual oversight.
League Tier 1 - Common
This is where everyone starts. As players win matches, they will move out to Tier 2. The remaining players here will be match farmers who mostly don't care about winning or don't even try, for whatever reason. For example:
- Players who just want credit for a Weekly PvP mission.
- Players who are just going through the motions of PvP for some other reason, such as to complete the Alliance Alert "The Forgotten Trophy" which requires 20 matches.
- Players who are trying to farm PvP rewards and just go AFK (away from keyboard) and throw the match.
- Any other player who really doesn't actually want to be in PvP but just want to check off PvP match count objectives.
These players typically make for a type of unsatisfying PvP experience, such as when they are paired with players who actually want to PvP and win; or who want a challenging match and end up defeating players who just go AFK or stealth and hide somewhere on the map.
The reward for this Tier is XP and Credits only, on par with PvE quests that exchange time for reward, and nothing specific to PvP at all.
It is important that even a Loss results in some kind of net gain or at least no net loss. In the case of not giving any rewards at all, the player actually loses time -- which is extremely valuable -- and they may decide to simply invest that time somewhere more enjoyable.
In the specific case of SWTOR, a small net gain such as at least being able to advance closer to completing a Weekly mission to participate in a number of PvP matches is still a net gain.
League Tier 2 - Casual
At this tier, theoretically everyone is at least trying to win. They might not aim to be the best and just want a casual pick-up game. Or they are just starting PvP and as newcomers must not be matched with veteran players -- If Mike Tyson one-shots a boxer from a high-school team, no one learns anything and it is a highly unsatisfying match. Just like the real world, regular Joes just starting a sport don't get matched against Pros and neither should the Pros expect to be paid handsomely for such a match.
As players get better and win more matches and leave this Tier, the remaining players will be:
- Casual players who don't care about getting much better, who just want casual fun but not get stomped by Pros all the time, whether those players are in premade teams or not.
- Players drifting in and out of Tier 3 as they transition into becoming better.
The reward for this Tier is still XP and Credits only, like any other simple quest that exchanges time for reward. Still nothing specific to PvP at all -- no leaderboard at the end of the match, no MVP voting, no medals, etcetera -- but more of a reward than at Tier 2.
League Tier 3 - Committed
At this tier, theoretically everyone is trying very hard to win, and also gearing up for whatever advantage they can get.
At this tier, rewards can start including PvP-specific rewards such as medals and including gear and materials that are required for PvP endgame.
Players who just want to farm special PvP rewards but have no intention of actually playing PvP will have to somehow balance wins and losses in order to stay in this Tier and keep farming without trying to play. More than likely they will simply fall back into Tier 2 where there are no special rewards worth farming.
Similarly, players who want to cheat the system and stay in a low tier to easily win against less experienced and less geared players can do so by losing matches and dropping back down to Tier 2 or Tier 1 -- which defeats the purpose of actually continuing this behavior as they are getting mundane rewards.
League Tier 4+ - Competitive
Finally, the "best" players reach Tier 4, whether they are solo or in premade groups. Depending on the population in this tier and the likelihood of matches, there can be additional tiers beyond this to help even out matches within the League so that the chance of winning a matchup is 50/50. But rewards do not need to be aggressively improved.
Roughly, Tiers 1 and 2 correspond to "Unranked" PvP and Tiers 3 and 4 correspond to "Ranked" PvP. Except that instead of a Valor score that can be accumulated through sheer repetition, players do not get to Ranked PvP without actually having skill to qualify for that rank. And they cannot expect to simply AFK or throw matches to farm rewards, because too much of that can suddenly drop them a Tier where those rewards don't exist.
Concession - Mismatched Tier Matchups
One of the common complaints about a League system with too many Tiers is the possibility that there will not be enough of a population within a League to sustain proper matchups.
Firstly, population size is a function of "interest". And here we use interest in a broad way to include various types of interest in PvP. For example, basic interest in even trying PvP. Then interest in getting better at PvP. Also interest in minmaxing for best numerical results in PvP.
Ultimately, the more people who are "interested" in PvP for whatever reason, the higher the population will be. And in each higher Tier, interest in better performance drives numbers.
So, if any League has such a low player population as to be problematic, an early cause would be that the League hasn't had enough time to sort players. A later cause would be not enough interest to improve personal performance and be moved up into those low-population Leagues.
And this is theoretically not the developer's concern. In any competitive sport, the highest levels will have the fewest pool of qualifying players.
One obvious solution is to expand the pool of qualifying players by reducing the Win:Loss ratio requirements. However, this needs to be done very conservatively in order to avoid too many bad matchups within any League. Highly unbalanced matchups reduce interest and ultimately reduces the overall PvP population as disinterested players leave. The League system is aimed at getting players good matchups to promote increasing interest and thereby increase the population.
Even with a "good" population, there will be off-peak server periods and seasonal real-life events that might result in a temporarily low pool of available matchups.
For this reason, a concession is to carefully allow Matchups with another League Tier if no matches are available after a long time. Of foremost importance here is how these Matchups are handled. In pretty much every MMO, these highly unbalanced matchups happen quietly without notification, resulting in frustration and a loss of interest due to bad matchups.
- Both teams must be notified of the mismatch and allowed to decline.
- The higher Tier team is rewarded based on the lower Tier team. So if a League 4 Team wins against a League 3 team, they get League 3 rewards. If they lose, they get League 3 loss awards.
- The lower Tier team is also rewarded based on their own Tier. This helps to avoid a possible Win Trading exploit where a lower Tier team has access to rewards of a higher League Tier they haven't qualified for.
- The higher Tier team cannot count the Win for their Win:Loss ratio.
- The lower Tier team does not count a Loss against their Win:Loss ratio.
Exploit - Character Churning and Throwing Matches to go to a Lower League
In this exploit, players start new toons hoping to rejoin PvP at the lowest League Tier. Then they use their superior skills and gear farmed through their established account to dominate until their wins push them out of the easy Leagues.
Once they are out of the easy Leagues, they deliberately lose again until they are back down to the easy League Tiers.
We already have reduced rewards and no special PvP-specific rewards for the lowest Leagues to dissuade manipulating the system to stay in a lower league. However, for some players, rewards are not the goal. They simply want easy kills. However, this destabilizes the League system as a whole because players cannot properly move up and down League Tiers if they are artificially pushed down by strong players trying to exploit the system. Further, greatly unbalanced matches (whether it is against a too-strong opponent, or one who is deliberately losing) disrupts the PvP League experience of getting proper matchups.
By its nature, Win:Loss ratio tracking tends to thwart this behavior. They would need to maintain a more or less balanced win:loss ratio in order to stay in the same League in which they want to farm player kills.
To further dissuade this exploit, we can have an additional mechanic where all characters owned by the same player begin at the same League as their highest-rated character. This assumes that these exploiters still want good rewards some of the time, and have some characters in the higher Leagues where they are getting the necessary rewards to gear their new characters. However, there is no necessary correlation between the exploit and having a higher-League-Tier character in their roster.
Exploit - Win Trading
It is possible that players can negotiate with each other to win trade for easy matches. Since the system tracks a Win:Loss ratio, they would have to maintain an even ratio stay in the same League. Which would be completely fine since they are Win Trading with each other and neither is moving ahead to better rewards.
Nevertheless, two teams in a small pool of possibilities might arrange to queue during off-peak hours and thereby continually encounter each other and Win Trade, farming rewards quickly. They might even swap one or two members to keep the groups "different" so as to avoid strictly mechanical Win Trading detection mechanisms.
Trying to positively identify Win Trading is difficult because it can look like a legitimate match. And in a League where we are aiming to put players in highly competitive matchups, it may actually be true that two teams are so evenly matched that their win:loss ratio against each other is in fact close to 50-50.
So instead of trying to identify Win Trading, we sidestep the issue and use match durations. We can establish an expected match duration of, say, 10 minutes. We might even force a maximum duration of 10 minutes, where the match ends and the winner is determined by a score after 10 minutes (e.g., total damage inflicted and total damage healed but not over-healed).
Then, in the group queue, those teams who had shorter matches are given lower priority. Those teams who went overtime are given higher priority. In this way, Win Traders are capped at a certain maximum reward rate.
(In addition, by giving teams that had shorter matches lower priority, we are also reducing the player-farming rate of those players who are deliberately holding in an easy league to farm player kills).
Consideration - Mixed League Tier Groups
It would be unnecessarily tedious for players to only be able to Group with others of exactly the same Tier in order to queue for a match, although this would be the optimal case.
Therefore, we can simply let players group, but have an additional mechanic for how wins and losses are handled.
For our discussion, the highest-League-rated player in a group will be designed the Carry. Theoretically, this player would be the "best" compared to everyone else in the Group.
We should be careful of a potential exploit to stack a Group with a single strong carry and hope to be queued into a lower League where the Carry can single-handedly win for everyone. Therefore, matches will be against a group of the same League rating as the Carry. This means the Carry will indeed have to carry the rest of the group and make up for the theoretically lesser contribution compared to the opposition, who might be a group comprised entirely of players all at the same League level.
For tracking Wins and Losses, the Carry is treated normally. Despite their handicapped team, if they lose, the loss will count against the Carry's ratio. If we prevented losses from counting, then Mixed League Tier Groups could only ever increase their Win:Loss ratio, which would provide another possible exploit.
For all characters in the Mixed League Tier Group who is of a lower tier, only wins count because they are handicapped and theoretically fighting against players of a higher League. In this way, players can in fact be carried by stronger ones steadily into higher Leagues. In a League system this theoretically has limits since at the higher Leagues, it might no longer be possible to win a match if you are Carrying too many weaker players. Eventually those players will reach the same League rating as the Carry and become vulnerable to Losses counting. And without corresponding ability to properly qualify for the League, they will take losses and drop back down.
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