Matchmaking

[qan]

As many of you have probably noticed, there have been some changes to matchmaking in Season 2.

In season 1, matchmaking was done in order of highest-rated in the bot to lowest-rated. Lower rated and unrated players were consistently kept from playing.

In a league that claims to pay more than just lip service to inclusiveness, this is surprising. But in a league where the number of games played has some positive correlation with your final score, it's unfair. The more games you play, the better chance you have of a strong performance, an advantageous team stack, a lucky streak, etc. Everyone knows this. No-one contests it. So by preferencing those who are rated highly in matchmaking, absolutely guaranteeing that the highest rated always play if they show, we further stack the odds against lower and mid-range players.

Remember, this isn't a group-oriented league, where you'll always want to play your strongest players. It's based on individual performance.

I saw something that undermined the integrity of the zone, and made a call to step in and change it. This is a sysop's prerogative. The first attempt wasn't a great one, relying on games played, preferencing those who haven't played as many games in the matchmaking. But this resulted in the same problem as before, with the same people being consistently benched. It also de-incentivizes showing in general. (Why show if you know you'll be benched?)

In lieu of a better solution, since last Sunday, bench selection has been fully random, using no criteria whatsoever. It's hardly ideal, but at least it doesn't provide a reverse handicap to top-rated players as happened in Season 1.

We can to come up with a set of criteria to determine bench selection that does not preference players unfairly. For example, the number of games you've played in the particular league out of the number needed to qualify could determine 20-50% of the decision, with the rest being random. Or other criteria could be added and used.

We can also look at trying to come up with the most evenly-matched teams, given the players available, benching those not used in matchmaking. This is a bit difficult, but I've been looking at some algorithms.

Or, if none of these options are acceptable, we need to completely rework the league such that the number of games played is not positively correlated with final score.

Or, finally, we can redefine the purpose of the league. We can call it a vet's league like every other one, and explicitly acknowledge that it unfairly preferences the best-rated, is not meant to be inclusive as claimed, and then work on solutions based on that premise.

Thoughts?

[Jessup]

I think if makes good sense to allow matchmaking to take into consideration number of games played to deprioritize those with the most games. We want to allow everyone to hit the quota of needed games to be played. If the algo is too hard to make for that though my second thought is some type of manuel override the host can do to compensate for randoms who are sat with very few games... meaning it would be possible to remove a player or two who was added by the bot originally and replace them with people being benched who have less. Of course ratings would be the basis on which these decisions to manuelly remove would be based off of. Basically instead of a !cansub we have a !canreplace.

If that doesn't work the backfill command u made could be forced perhaps on everyone with more games??

I agree with your random add system for now if the algo's are being a pain to sort out properly and have fair matchmaking.

I am strongly against "VET LEAGUE" lol .... for one that is very subjective and for two that is giving away the zone to a select few. If "vets" want to make their own zone and have it by invite only and do leagues there by all means they should create a new zone and have at it but not in Trench Wars.

Thanks for all the hard work you do qan. You and rab implementing the automization on the new TSL site is a BIG improvement. Removing the prefered adding too is FAIR and JUST. The main goal is to just get this Matchmaking system to make the best teams with all of those who sign up to play while evenly spreading numbers of games into the mix.

[Tiny]

2 cents..
Can you make it where if you were on the bench the prior round, you can't be benched the next no matter the league? Next, also take into consideration people who add themselves to the first sub list..... For people who want to jav and don’t care about wb. They add themselves to the !sub list for wbs and it gives them credit for being a sub, whether they subbed or not, making them unbenchable in the next round.
This will allow people who get benched to play and people to bench themselves and solve issues.

[Rab]

My preference - as simple as possible. Fully random will probably turn out to be good enough that it's not worth doing something more complicated.