also, what system(s) do you prefer / know of that handle multiplayer matchmaking well? it seems to me that a good system might be necessarily game-specific to some extent, although i'm sure the state of the art is much better than what i've experienced gaming to date xD.
> also, what system(s) do you prefer / know of that handle multiplayer matchmaking well?
None, and actually I don't think it's particularly healthy for the game. For example, I had plenty of fun casually pubbing Counter Strike in the early 2000s. When I wanted to take the game more seriously, I made a team and joined a league which might include group play, single/double elimination, and exhibition games. Actual competitive play (scrims, matches, tournaments) is fundamentally different than what today we call "matchmaking."
yeah, that strikes me as a pretty fair proscription, unfortunately-- the skill gap from coordinated team play in any team game makes it to where teams that play often together are matched against ad-hoc teams of individually more skilled players to make things "balanced", which were it even be possible to do this in the "50% win probability for each team" sense still leads mostly to unfun matches one way or the other. and, of course, queueing with friends you don't play with often, or with high skill variation amongst them just completely screws you from a balance/rank perspective (but hey, at least you get to lose together with all your friends! :).
I'm actually flabbergasted why you can't make a team in games like CSGO or Overwatch. And then play in tournaments or matches (against, you know, other teams). It makes no sense to have individual matchmaking in a team game. Game devs create this individual matchmaking system (which is paradoxically taken seriously by casual players, but totally ignored by actual competitive players), and the community and other organizers (enter FaceIT, ESEA, etc.) have to actually set up leagues, tournaments, and events.
In my experience the reason behind devs loving matchmaking is fairly straightforward: being able to solo queue raises engagement. It takes time and effort to make a team in the first place, more time and effort to coordinate games when you're now schedule wrangling n other people, and that extra effort is magnified across all the teams participating. In contrast, hopping into soloqueue is so brainless that the hours spent playing soloqueue end up dwarfing the hours spent playing as teams. Will some people who care enough still play team mode? Sure, but if solo matchmaking is an option it becomes the default simply through being the most-played mode. At the end of the day, devs seem rationally interested in juicing engagement numbers for the vast majority of the playerbase and letting those serious enough to care about not pugging figure it out for themselves.
I think there's a pretty limited space for games that don't compromise on various aspects of design (matchmaking, mtx, etc) with the explicit goal of making a better top-end competitive ecosystem. I'd personally love to see a competitive team-based game without any form of solo queue, but I'm skeptical it would do well in the market. It's almost like Facebook engagement-doomscrolling vs. a mailing list: the format of the latter means there'll probably be better content, but a whole lot more people are going to be hanging out on the former. At least mailing lists don't have to recoup development costs.
> I'd personally love to see a competitive team-based game without any form of solo queue
I'm okay with solo queue, as long as I can also have a team queue where I could play in traditional seasons or tournaments with a team of friends. It just seems odd that one needs to go outside of the game itself (to ESEA or what-have-you) for this feature.
I see your standpoint. I don't see it happening from a practical / financial perspective though. Being required to have the right number of same skilled friends ready is quite a high entry bar to playing a game.
> It makes no sense to have individual matchmaking in a team game.
I kinda feel broadsided by your rather extreme views here. Later on in this thread you say, okay, solo-queue is fine but you need a way to make teams and join tournaments, so it's also not really clear what you think.
Single queue exists because team games are still fun in pick-up groups. Go to any basketball court and you're going to find guys playing pick-up groups of basketball. I don't hold a 5+ basketball team in my pocket, and that's okay. Because playing with strangers in a team-game is still fun. And sometimes even more fun because you're meeting new people and playing with new team dynamics -- solving new human team dynamics on the fly is an underrated fun part of team games. Single queue matching exists because rank gives people a stake in the game and they take it seriously, and it makes the ranking system accessible, and it's fun.
A game that only offers tournaments and requires you to come with a pre-built 5-man team is just a game that excludes most people. The people forming teams for tournaments is the 1% of the gaming population.
I want to come home from work and play a couple CS:GO games with others who will take the game seriously. I don't have time for a tournament. I don't have a team. I don't want to join a no-stakes casual game where people are putting the controller down to answer the front door or just disconnecting. Without ranked-solo queue, what system do you propose for this common use-case?
> Single queue exists because team games are still fun in pick-up groups.
Single queue is fine, I just don't think the "ranked" aspect of it is healthy for the game.
> I don't want to join a no-stakes casual game where people are putting the controller down to answer the front door or just disconnecting.
Maybe not disconnecting, but trolling and just generally being a pain actually ends up being what happens all the time even at high solo queue tiers (last year I had two accounts at Global Elite). ESEA and FaceIT have much more robust pugging systems put in place so that's why people take it more seriously.
But my point is that even though I'm a very competent Global Elite player, my Counter Strike heydays are behind me and if I were to seriously play against even a semi-pro ESEA-Main (or probably even Intermediate) team, I'd get absolutely destroyed. So solo MMR is a pointless metric to have, and just adds toxicity to your game.
this would probably work better if, in the case of Overwatch, the teams weren't six players (i personally have always felt like the game would be better @ like 4v4 anyway, because of how god damn frustrating dealing with 5 random players on your team every game is in a game that is balanced purely around teamwork and inability to solo carry w/o being much more skilled than everyone else in the game)
No you can't. Overwatch, CSGO, etc, etc. don't have a way to make a team and queue as a team (against other teams). You do this by playing on FaceIT, ESEA, CEVO, or in other leagues. Built-in matchmaking is only individual. This is, from a competitive standpoint, a meaningless data point and (from a casual standpoint) only creates toxicity.
>No you can't. Overwatch, CSGO, etc, etc. don't have a way to make a team and queue as a team (against other teams).
I don't think this is true. I play Overwatch and I sometimes play with anywhere between 1 and 5 other players as we have arranged to group up before looking for a game. With 5 other players, it's a 6-stack, and I believe that a 6-stack will always be matched against another 6-stack. As far as I know, it takes the average skill rating of your group and finds another group with a similar average skill rating to play against you.
Overwatch, CSGO and virtually all other team based FPS allow you to queue solo, as group, or a full 5 person team. This is outside of a specific league. There are dedicated LFG sites for different games to help find groups ahead of times. Generally you will be matched against a similar team, and different games use some form of skill based matchmaking, but depending on how many players there are, what modes, what region you are in, as a solo player you could be matched against a premade or vice versa.
I am curious what you mean by matchmaking is only individual, it is common to party up and queue as a 5 stack, both in csgo and valorant. now when you have a bunch of solo qs playing against a 5 stack, the actual team is going to win 9/10 times...
I do miss the old days of CS with "clans" where it wasnt so hard to join up and have a lose group of people you played with regularly and got to know ~20-30 people and whoever was on would join up to play together (maybe this still exists, but I havent found it..)
> I am curious what you mean by matchmaking is only individual, it is common to party up and queue as a 5 stack, both in csgo and valorant. now when you have a bunch of solo qs playing against a 5 stack, the actual team is going to win 9/10 times...
That's exactly the problem. The MMR system isn't based off of team ratings, but off of players. Otherwise, teams (e.g. 5 players) would always play against other teams (another 5 players). Now, even ignoring the model problems this generates (and the gymnastics that something like TruSkill does to mitigate it), it's just a bad experience.
For example, if I go to the beach and join some random volleyball pick-up-game, I'm expecting that the purpose of the game is to "have fun." If I'm joining a team to play in a rec league, the expectation is to try and win. The idea of "matchmaking" mixes these two concepts, so you end up having different people with different expectations. Some are going to say "why are you trying so hard" while others will retort "why aren't you trying harder?" This misalignment of expectation is, imo, the chief cause of toxicity in (competitive) video games these days.
