MMR Matchmaking Planning Thread. Nerds welcome.

[Kassius]

Intermediary suggestion, mostly aimed at the EU timezone (18:00-22:00 UTC/GMT), is to allow online players to 'register' interest in playing MMR. I have a feeling there's plenty who would do it, but the nature of the EU timezone is people launch SS, see there's <100 people in TW, then close it and try again later.

If we allowed a !interested or !available to the MMRBot while there are no games being hosted, it could count the interested players. Once it reaches the threshold of 8 for a 4v4, it would re-ping the players for confirmation they still want to play, and then ping the available hosts who are online, or a discord channel to alert hosts who may want to help but are not currently ingame.

For more refinement, !available 1 or !available 1,2 or !available 2,3 for the gamemodes you'd want to play so it doesn't try to make a MMR match when you have 4 wbs and 4 javs online.

Might just help us EU players to get more games in before it's actually bed time.

[qan]

Assuming a player is only 'willing' to play spid, or terr will the bot allow them in a shark? And if we allow 1, 2, and 7, with 16 players in the arena, if 1 of them is only 'willing' to jav, will the game be forced to play one jav?

MatchBot handles the actual game, so (at least until we have proper matchmaking) there won't be any restrictions on someone queuing as one thing but being added as another. However, in how I'm imagining team outputs working for hosts/caps adding teams, their rating in shark would not be displayed and they would only be listed in the spider section.

Specials remain to be figured out. Ratings changes for specials are rolled into spider as a general "fighter" ship. If someone wants to play a special, they would need to queue as spider, and would be required to play spider if it's decided not to run a special for that match. If they refused to spid and only play jav, it would be the same as leaving a match without a good reason, ruining play for others, and could result in a ban. We're still figuring out all the details, though, so all of this is subject to change.

[daresound]

..... we might be able to create a helper system: verifies there are at least two people willing to terr, four willing to shark, and 6-10+ willing to spid. .

Assuming a player is only 'willing' to play spid, or terr will the bot allow them in a shark? And if we allow 1, 2, and 7, with 16 players in the arena, if 1 of them is only 'willing' to jav, will the game be forced to play one jav?

[Cape]

Another fun idea for the zone to toy with for a month:


Allow multiple aliases but your rating follows you.
All ratings are hidden and revealed again at a later date.

Lets see how the games are and how creative/raunchy the aliases inevitably get.
May the best name win.

[qan]

Yes, !p and the ships you're willing to play is the plan for base.

As an intermediary before matchmaking, we might be able to create a helper system: verifies there are at least two people willing to terr, four willing to shark, and 6-10+ willing to spid. Then rather than outputting matchmade teams, it shows everyone's ratings in the ships they're willing to play, with terrs and sharks up front. From there it's up to form teams manually, but without having to guess who will play what role.

There's no schedule at the moment, as it's just based on when hosts are available. Often they hand it off to someone else when done. You can encourage your host to use !poll / !endpoll after they've run a streak of the same gametype, though there's nothing requiring them to do that. It should make it a lot simpler to gauge the crowd's opinion, though, and more regularly.

[Riverside]

As far as I know, jav and wb MMR games can be hosted at the same time.

There's additional work for the host(s) but it cud b a way for players to vs in their desired ships. Basing included.

[RageRitual]

For base !p 3 5 8 would be good idea, just list the ships you want to play. If we end up with not enough signups for a certain ship, maybe the bot could give some sort of feedback if not enough ships of a certain type signup. Something like "4 terriers, 1 shark, 23 spiders have signed up, need more sharks!"

I strongly suggest we keep specials out of base at this time if that hasn't already been considered.

For subs maybe only allow subs that are within a % of the rating of the player being subbed out.

Is there no way we can organize some sort of schedule with the mmr hosts for 3 different leagues so we don't have 20 games of jav in a row or whatever? Something like warbirds @3, javs @4, base@5.

[LeeRomeno]

For base, maybe its possible that once people signup, they specify the ships they are willing to play as well. For example !p spider !p shark !p terrier !p all. Once there is enough players for all ships, game can start.
Really like Capes ideas.

[qan]

I like those extras ideas. Definitely much later on the list after matchmaking for basing and automation, though. Good to keep cooking.

Voting was a very easy one so I did add that, noticing hosts sometimes run a manual. Barely tested but probably works. Hosts: !poll !endpoll Does what it says on the tin.

[Cape]

Another idea along those lines is a weekly +/- leaderboard.

To honor or trash the top 1-2 winners/losers could be a fun thing.

Anyone can rank high there as it only tracks individual improvement or decline.

[banzi fuq]

As if the MMR lobby wasn't sweaty enough, a win streak multiplier for ratings would be interesting. Makes sense since rating changes diminish with more games played.

Not sure if other mmrs have streak multipliers but an achievement might be nice. Someone (maybe og) threw out achievements similar to DT.

[Cape]

Sounds good. GL with basing algo!

Here are some features I'd like to see at some point:

!vote command for which game runs next.

As if the MMR lobby wasn't sweaty enough, a win streak multiplier for ratings would be interesting. Makes sense since rating changes diminish with more games played.

[qan]

Big news! With the creation of the snapshot system, #3 was not too difficult to accomplish. A preliminary version of MMR basing is now able to be tested.

Keep in mind, there is no matchmaking for this system as of yet. We need to ensure that ratings calculations are working correctly, so the first step will be running games with teams drafted either by captains or hosts. I leave the community to decide how to do this. (I can enable pick by turn if people would prefer that.) For hosts: captains can be chosen by willingness, rating or known skill level.

Subs, switches, and changes should all hopefully work just fine.

Fair warning: base ratings may break. I'll be around today if a group wants to test and can fix bugs live as they come up. After today I'll be out of town for a few days and not checking in much until I return.

The next step after we get some testing done is matchmaking. Matchmaking for base is a challenging algorithm given that there are many factors: skill level of each player in different ships, willingness to play in a given ship, necessity of having 1 terr and 2 sharks, and finally picking teams intelligently much like an experienced captain would. As we develop this algorithm, we will be able to test it live: we can run the algorithm using real teams, and if it doesn't give good results, we can default to just having captains (or hosts) pick.


Also, for minor QOL improvements, !showteams/!st on MMRBot now displays vertically so you can easily see your team's abilities at a glance.

[qan]

So if a high value sub comes in and the subbed team gets the win, their rating boost is lower than it would have been if they won without the sub? What are the rules, restrictions, and processes around subbing?

Yes, that's right. Or at least, the portion of the match that they play with that person will give a smaller boost (and greater loss amount if they lose -- but again, for that portion).

There aren't any real rules established around subs at the moment. We're in testing, so it's all being developed as we go. Currently only hosts can do subs, so teams needing a sub will have to send a ?help call or PM the game host. Hosts should make a decent effort to sub in a player of a reasonably close rating (if only to make sure the game stays competitive) though the math works out even if there's a big difference.

[banzi fuq]

So if a high value sub comes in and the subbed team gets the win, their rating boost is lower than it would have been if they won without the sub? What are the rules, restrictions, and processes around subbing?