Skill Based Matchmaking

[(PSN)palebluelight]

So I’d like to bring this up because of the Helminth System mastery rank requirements being lowered. Now I’ve recently seen a video from Grind Hard Squad and it brought up the issue of the change and in the comment section there were of course low mr players complaining (whining) about other commentors wanting it to not be accessible for the purposes of making them learn how to play before they got access. Now I don’t really care but what it made me think of is the competitive nature of this game that isn’t really tapped into to in the pve side. Im mr26 about to be 27 and it’s rare I get shut out damage dealt enemies killed but I notice lower mr’s are consistently not contributing especially during sortie and at hydron. This needs to be a point to get players building, trying things but if they’re constantly being carried that doesn’t create a good tension to try. This leads me my title for me at a higher mastery rank I’d like a thrill from playing with peers and competing while doing objectives Deimos for example was fun closer to release because of this. Having a version of mastery based matchmaking would add value to the experience encouraging newer players to get through it together or use recruitment chat and organize a group. I think they’d be better served if this took priority in matchmaking. I wasn’t the greatest Tenno when I started I’m a bit prideful so I did regular star chart mostly by myself and steel path very much the same way and both play throughs were extremely fun (but tedious) because I relied on different frames, weapons etc but the squad experience was different with steel path. They were all made up of peers mr 17 (guess-timation) and above and we were all into it because at times we barely survived. I thought to myself if it’d been like this the first time through I would’ve been hooked even more when I started of course I mean the group dynamic not the difficulty god no lol! I’ve seen a bit of negativity from vets and newer Tenno and I think this may alleviate some. I know some vets who would even appreciate being asked for a carry as opposed to dropping in and someone is just unfortunately leeching or trying but badly modded. Anyway just my ideas and feedback do what you will with them.

 

 

 

 

 

[Electropuncher]

I mean, I have no problem squadding up with lower MR players. If anything, they tend to be less obnoxious than an MR 20 who still doesn't know how to play the game. I think the real problem is how people fixate on MR like it's any real metric of your skill level. If anything, it's a measure of how much time you've wasted on leveling up weapons and frames, rather than how good you are with them. Yeah, mastery tests theoretically are a test of your skill, but some either don't work right (the carousel of lasers around MR 7 gave me infinite retries and didn't reset on death) or can be easily cheesed (the MR ~18 stealth, melee only test where you have to release a hostage without getting spotted and can't use abilities. I used a Banshee and a Larkspur to blast the enemies from half the map away). Frankly, the entire design philosophy of MR is really janky, and outside of some VERY specific aspects of the game, it does nothing except gate which weapons you can buy.

But hey, you do you. Why not just make some friends in game who you meet up with at a specific time? WF matchmaking is a shot in the dark most times anyway.

[(PSN)thegarada]

I dunno how to tell you this, MR, after 13-14 is an indicator of... nothing. Just how willing are you to farm and level junk. Also, hydron and sortie? I get that it is disappointing to go to hydron to level and no one does damage, but in a sortie you would be running top gear. Do we need match making to fight level 50-80 mobs now? You can kill these semi instantly, so who cares if you are carrying 3 players.

[Klokwerkaos]

5 hours ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

I dunno how to tell you this, MR, after 13-14 is an indicator of... nothing. Just how willing are you to farm and level junk. Also, hydron and sortie? I get that it is disappointing to go to hydron to level and no one does damage, but in a sortie you would be running top gear. Do we need match making to fight level 50-80 mobs now? You can kill these semi instantly, so who cares if you are carrying 3 players.

I don't quite agree with this...

Like, it's technically accurate, but lets also be a bit real... people with 7k+ hours in the game and every weapon and frame forma'd extensively tend to learn a thing or two along the way.  Obviously everyone learns at different rates and retains knowledge differently, but when someone is like say "top SAT score" and you're like "well, that's just a test of their ability to fill in circles with a #2 pencil", yeah, it's technically accurate, but something important is lost in the translation.

Obviously not everyone with maxed out gear knows the same amount and some might as well be total noobs, but if we're being honest, that's an insignificant minority that is remembered because they are loud, obnoxious, and memory favors negative experiences.

To get to OP's point though, there will never be skill based matching because there is no "skill" that is required in this game.  Knowledge yes, but like... if you can do basic math, read, and have mediocre finger dexterity and depth perception, you got this.  Warframe is not and has never been about skill, quite the opposite, the devs go very far out of their way to protect and baby the weakest links and punish skill and knowledge every chance they get.

[(PSN)thegarada]

17 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

I don't quite agree with this...

Like, it's technically accurate, but lets also be a bit real... people with 7k+ hours in the game and every weapon and frame forma'd extensively tend to learn a thing or two along the way.  Obviously everyone learns at different rates and retains knowledge differently, but when someone is like say "top SAT score" and you're like "well, that's just a test of their ability to fill in circles with a #2 pencil", yeah, it's technically accurate, but something important is lost in the translation.

Obviously not everyone with maxed out gear knows the same amount and some might as well be total noobs, but if we're being honest, that's an insignificant minority that is remembered because they are loud, obnoxious, and memory favors negative experiences.

To get to OP's point though, there will never be skill based matching because there is no "skill" that is required in this game.  Knowledge yes, but like... if you can do basic math, read, and have mediocre finger dexterity and depth perception, you got this.  Warframe is not and has never been about skill, quite the opposite, the devs go very far out of their way to protect and baby the weakest links and punish skill and knowledge every chance they get.

To be fair, it takes a while to get the movement right in warframe. But, ya, most of the skill in warframe can be learned from wiki 😝. 

The point is, there is a not a logical reason for match making in things like sortie, when you can one shoot most stuff. 

[NecroPed]

I think skill based matchmaking only really has a place when it comes to competitive PvP game modes.
And warframe is a cooperative game. Limiting who you play with should not happen in matchmaking because I think it goes against the very core of the game being squad/cooperative based. If you have a problem with inexperienced players in matchmaking you are better off making a private squad. I get that there can be a substantial difference in a players output depending on their gear. But, I really don't think limiting matchmaking is a good idea. I can struggle to get a public fissure going sometimes, I don't want that to be even harder.

Things like Steel Path and Arbitrations being locked behind unlocking the entire star map is the cooperative gameplay equivalent to skill based matchmaking. This is a progression based game. You need to progress to unlock areas of the game. Could it do with some work to even out when players are ready to tackle what they're about to play, sure. Should it be tied to matchmaking? I don't think so. 

I think a far better solution at this point would be Steel Path versions of special game modes, like sortie and fissures. Which keeps the matchmaking free, but gives you a harder (More appropriate?) mission locked behind progression (Learning along the way?) that prevents a lot of low geared/leveled players from being able to participate. 

[(NSW)BalticBarbarian]

While higher MR does not imply skill, it does suggest it. Now, at MR26, I am definitely a better player then I was when I was MR10. That does not mean that I am better at WF then any given MR10 player. But, statistically, if you put an MR10 player and an MR20 player next to each other, you'd usually expect the MR20 to be performing better.

As for proper matchmaking - never going to happen. But not for reasons you are thinking of!

Consider a simple situation: an MR2 player goes into a Lith fissure. He gets teamed up with an MR29 (who happens to want something out of a Lith relic). What does the MR2 see? A powerful late-game weapon, a premium warframe skin and a cool-looking syandana! And as soon as the mission is over, DE is happy to sell all of those to the MR2 - just enter your credit card here... And if the MR29 got really bored waiting at extraction then the MR2 now also wants a shawzin (or 3).

And what happens if matchmaking is implemented? The MR2 gets teamed up with another MR2 and all he sees is another Excal coloured pink! That doesn't exacly drive sales, does it?

Lack of matchmaking gives DE some free advertising and hence increases revenue. And I'm confident that people inside DE understand it very well. And they will not implement a feature that a) requires a ton of effort and b) decreases their revenue.

[CephalonCarnage]

On 2020-10-13 at 6:10 AM, (PS4)palebluelight said:

So I’d like to bring this up because of the Helminth System mastery rank requirements being lowered. Now I’ve recently seen a video from Grind Hard Squad and it brought up the issue of the change and in the comment section there were of course low mr players complaining (whining) about other commentors wanting it to not be accessible for the purposes of making them learn how to play before they got access. Now I don’t really care but what it made me think of is the competitive nature of this game that isn’t really tapped into to in the pve side. Im mr26 about to be 27 and it’s rare I get shut out damage dealt enemies killed but I notice lower mr’s are consistently not contributing especially during sortie and at hydron

There's often a reason for this - the high MR players have already killed everything, the low ones look on and try to help out but cannot gain any traction.

I've seen this myself as a low and med MR player. Plenty of times I entered a defence mission only to see a high MR player kill everything in sight with an ability. Low rank: 0 damage, high rank: 100%. (OK< I exaggerate, but its not far off that sometimes). Same with other boss battles, the high rank ones who might have run that mission countless times, zip along, do the damage, get out and the low MR player who has been randomly stuck with them, looks on bewildered.

 

I would think the only solution (and a good one TBH) is to ensure players only get matched with others of a similar MR rank. No more a MR 1 getting lumped in with a MR 20, because the matchmaker currently says "you cannot run this mission unless its gets done for you, or you run solo". You cannot realistically run any mission with others of similar skill, and thus threat, with the current matchmaker.

I think it is a huge problem really, the enjoyment of the game for lower rank players is in beating the missions, not being "carried". So fixing this to give roughly equal MR matching (within 5 MRs? or tiers of slightly overlapping MR ranks) would solve that.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

On 2020-10-14 at 9:35 PM, (PS4)thegarada said:

. But, ya, most of the skill in warframe can be learned from wiki 😝. 

That is not skill. That is knowledge. You can gain knowledge from the wiki, but the know-how to use it effectively, apply it to other things, and gain understanding from the result to lead to more findings is where the skill lies. If this were DND, I'd relate reading the wiki as gaining intelligence while applying it and learning from the application applies wisdom. It's a cycle that leads to your skill of Warframe understanding increasing. 

[BahamutKaiser]

If you were actually good, you'd enjoy the weight. 

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

17 hours ago, BahamutKaiser said:

If you were actually good, you'd enjoy the weight. 

You're only viewing the issue from one side: the higher ranked player having to Carry

but it's bad both ways.

a New Player going into a mission, being left behind by all the flying bullet jumpers, then left with nothing to do; is going to feel pretty bad, and bored at the very least.

it sucks for him just as much.

 

I'm sure there's plenty of new players who would like to explore the Starchart for their first time at an unrushed pace.

 

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

10 hours ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

I'm sure there's plenty of new players who would like to explore the Starchart for their first time at an unrushed pace.

 

I agree. I took it sorta slow when I started, because I wanted to take in the scenery and scan flowers cuz I KNEW that had to be important  (and it was).

Additionally, you can't do skill based matchmaking. Why? Because there's nothing to base skill on. You wanna use MR? Well MR, as most know it, isn't a reliable measure of how useful a person is gonna be in a mission nor how well they know the game's finer details. It's a PvE game supporting cooperation. Skill based matchmaking just wouldn't work. 

[Methanoid]

On 2020-10-14 at 9:13 AM, Klokwerkaos said:

1) Like, it's technically accurate, but lets also be a bit real... people with 7k+ hours in the game and every weapon and frame forma'd extensively tend to learn a thing or two along the way. 

2) To get to OP's point though, there will never be skill based matching because there is no "skill" that is required in this game.  Knowledge yes, but like... if you can do basic math, read, and have mediocre finger dexterity and depth perception, you got this.  Warframe is not and has never been about skill, quite the opposite, the devs go very far out of their way to protect and baby the weakest links and punish skill and knowledge every chance they get.

1) MR has never meant anything, neither has time played, or any other supposed skill indicator, regardless of time, rank or anything else, you still get underachievers, afkers, ppl fishing in missions etc, anyone and everyone from rank 0 to 29 can and does all the stupid things you can think of.

2) Yeah skill matching is a stupid idea, esp in a game like warframe where 95% of the missions/nodes are utterly void of players as it is, DE's recent bright idea for a few years now has been to keep thinning the herd via continual new restrictions in a once open game to make the game as barren and devoid of players outside of a few grind nodes.

This is why railjack is dead, the starchart is dead outside of a few affinity/resource spots, steel path is dead, everything/anything new they add that is a brief content island or has pointless restrictions just ends up dead, buried and forgotten, throwing in yet more restrictions in matchmaking would be more suicidal than ever, and considering DE's trend, lets not give them any more bright ideas on how they can cripple their own game further and make it as restrictive and unpleasant as possible to play.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

48 minutes ago, Methanoid said:

MR has never meant anything, neither has time played, or any other supposed skill indicator, regardless of time

It does to a degree. A higher MR with 2k hours has a much higher chance of understanding finer details than a low MR or someone with little play time. It's just not with 100% reliability. Generally higher MR people are more knowledgeable. That stuff doesn't give any indication as to effectiveness in mission though. 

[Methanoid]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Rainbow_Neos1 said:

It does to a degree. A higher MR with 2k hours has a much higher chance of understanding finer details than a low MR or someone with little play time. It's just not with 100% reliability. Generally higher MR people are more knowledgeable. That stuff doesn't give any indication as to effectiveness in mission though. 

lets just say its a grey area, it can be 1 way or the other, slapping down a 1 way only enforcement only fractures an already heavily fractured playerbase that struggle to group with others in the vast majority of system nodes/gametypes.

[Aesthier]

Or you could just go join groups on steel path. 

While it might not remove all the newbies I do believe it would be more effective in filtering out the skill challenged chaff than the notion of MR locks.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

2 hours ago, Aesthier said:

Or you could just go join groups on steel path. 

While it might not remove all the newbies I do believe it would be more effective in filtering out the skill challenged chaff than the notion of MR locks.

Steel Path isn't enjoyable for a lot of people. 

 

3 hours ago, Methanoid said:

lets just say its a grey area, it can be 1 way or the other, slapping down a 1 way only enforcement only fractures an already heavily fractured playerbase that struggle to group with others in the vast majority of system nodes/gametypes.

Yup. It's not one size fits all. 

[Aldain]

The current state of Warframe at large is people deleting entire rooms with minimal effort/input.

There's no "skill" to matchmake with in 90% of circumstances, you're either nuking or walking to the extraction because things are dying faster than your bullets can reach them.

That's not even touching the topic of MR, which pretty much only shows "Hey look at all this junk I've leveled and discarded while spamming ESO!" after a certain point.

[Aesthier]

On 2020-10-17 at 3:59 PM, (PS4)Rainbow_Neos1 said:

Steel Path isn't enjoyable for a lot of people.

Neither is having a frame you enjoy nerfed to the ground.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

6 hours ago, Aesthier said:

Neither is having a frame you enjoy nerfed to the ground.

How is that relevant? Steel Path would be viable for filtering out low MRs to a degree, but SP isn't fun (for most) and isn't worth the extra work. 

[Hobie-wan]

Many walls of text, and admittedly I'm replying without reading much of the other replies. So apologies if stuff has been brought up several times already. I'm probably going to end up with another wall.

Without players going through some many hour evaluation bu an actual person (not some standardized test which can be studied and cheesed), there is no way to judge people's skill. MR is practically meaningless. Different weapons, frames, and mods make a big difference, even to one single mission run with the different combinations. Not everything can be measured by number of kills and damage dealt.

A frame that is not a speedster might lag behind the group which leads to them having nothing to kill on the way to the objective. A support frame may be busy keeping everyone alive or full of energy so they can do other things. I was in a sortie with a Vauban last night. They had the lowest amount of damage, but they kept most of the enemies incapacitated for the rest of to eliminate.

I like seeing the biggest numbers next to my name at the end of a mission too, but this is a co-op game. As long as someone isn't purposefully standing around doing absolutely nothing, screwing up spy vaults or whatnot when they clearly have no idea what they're doing, and the mission gets done then it's all good.

[Birdframe_Prime]

Alright, I’m going to ask you a question:

What statistic, that Warframe tracks, can you use to measure player skill?

Mastery Rank is not skill, it’s a ‘stuff’ tracker with perks, so what stat do we see in game that is actually relevant to skill?

Would you say it’s kills? Time in mission? Damage dealt? Damage taken? Headshots? Ability usage? Success rate vs Fail or Quit rate?

There literally isn’t something in Warframe that the game actually keeps track of that is relevant to player skill in the way it would be for another game.

K:D, for example, is useless in Warframe because it’s a horde model with thousands of enemies and only 4-6 ‘lives’ per mission. It would make all the difference in a shooter game, but not here.

Revives, assists, actions per game, all of that is pretty useless in terms of tracking actual skill in Warframe, too.

There are, admittedly, some skilled elements, right? Aim for weapons that need headshots to deal the best damage, timing for abilities, even some of the parkour aspects take a modicum of skill to master.

But that’s all. There’s elements of skill in Warframe, but there’s elements of braindead repetition, elements of knowledge beating out effort, elements of raw damage beating out correct modding and all of those other ‘skilled’ elements.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to quantify ‘skill’ in Warframe.

So… as much as I’d love to be right there with you, matching with players that are on my proverbial level, rather than insanely better than me, or bimbling around in their first real survival attempt… the question of quantifying what is and isn’t a skilled player in this game can’t really be solved for a value.

And that means you’ll not get what you want in the PvE part of the game.

[(PSN)Rainbow_Neos1]

1 hour ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Mastery Rank is not skill, it’s a ‘stuff’ tracker with perks, so what stat do we see in game that is actually relevant to skill?

It's also a time/effort meter. Generally, you've learned more the higher the MR you are. It's not a definitive indicator, but it does mean something in a general sense. You can expect an MR29 to understand finer details in the game faster if they don't know them, and you can expect them to know near all the basics by heart. Not always the case, but generally it is. It's also a general indicator of versatility. A high MR has more weapons that are probably formad out and has tons of mods to make different builds, so they can fulfill many different needs. MR is a bit more than a stuff tracker. 

[B4HEK]

В 13.10.2020 в 08:10, (PS4)palebluelight сказал:

Having a version of mastery based matchmaking would add value to the experience encouraging newer players to get through it together or use recruitment chat and organize a group.

In this outcome you could possibly met my excalibur at simaris` onslaught and yell at me: "F&*ing idiot, why aren`t you trinity or saryn?"

The poin here is that actually skilled players are mostly skilled in their frames of choice and they mainly play as thoose frames, so it would make your random-party experince a glowing circus of madness where everyone is competing for percentage of damage at the end of the mission, or noone actually completing mission, doing some other stuff...

Have a nice day.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Rainbow_Neos1 said:

Generally

Key word ^^

I know this is anecdotal, but I gave up on even believing that MR is in any way a good indicator of the players' ability to learn because of these:

When MR 25 was the highest you could get, I met an MR 25 that shouted at me (on voice, not text, which is how I knew he wasn't actually trolling) to stop sprinting in Survival because it used more life support.

Before that, when MR 19 was the highest, I met an MR 18 that told me life support stacked past 100% and so insisted on popping the pods as they dropped (and this was before the change to have them drop every 2 minutes) was 'efficient'. I had to get the other players in the game to literally stop killing things, have him pop a pod, and watch as it went from 100 to 99 in two seconds for him to actually start saying 'it must be a bug, I'll stop for this game'.

MR is a massively mixed bag because players deliberately don't rank up sometimes, and others rank up compulsively from the moment they join.

I know a player who moved on from the game, his son played with him and followed instructions really well. We called him 'tiny' because he was only 6 when he started and quit playing when he was 8. Before he did quit, the kid was able to lead a squad (in text) through a multi-hour T4 Survival or Defense by picking frames and composition builds with relevant call-outs whenever people got off-topic or bored. He barely made it past MR 10, and I'm still impressed by his ability to learn.

Players will throw you for a loop, so the best option is to assume that anyone you meet could be anything, no matter their rank, from a moron to a savant.

That's why I will never take the idea of showing off 'MR as any form of 'relevant context' in discussions, chat, Forums or anything else' as a direction to move in.