SBMM is fine as an option for 1v1 games, but it's so bad for team games. It actively foments toxicity between players, and it often doesn't even work that well. I remember playing League of Legends and only one in maybe five or ten games was actually good. The rest were ruined by leavers, smurfs, toxicity, or just bad matchups that made the games lopsided. You win as many of those games as you lose, but winning lopsided games gets old.
It doesn't help that a lot of these games aren't even that much fun to begin with. A good game should be fun whether you win or lose, but a lot of these games are only really enjoyable if you're winning. The play gets overshadowed by the competition and skinner box mechanics, leaving a hollow experience for the vast majority of players.
The rest were ruined by leavers, smurfs, toxicity, or just bad matchups that made the games lopsided
leavers
just ban them after a couple offenses
smurfs
matchmaking system should be able to detect smurfs (high KDAs, high win rates, other metrics) and boost their hidden ELO very quickly - thus making them no longer smurfs
toxicity
just ban them after a couple offenses
bad matchups
matchmaking makes this better, not worse. without skill based matchmaking you would have even more lopsided games with even more disproportionate skills
Seems like the real issue with League is Riot's unwillingness to permaban players and enforce its rules, instead trying to retain the toxic players forever and coddling their behavior with special queues. Part of this is that toxic players pay just as much (if not more) money than other players, and the other part is that it would be expensive to hire enough GMs to actually review all the cases of toxicity in chat. The problem isn't the matchmaking, it's riot being cheap
Seems like the real issue with League is Riot's unwillingness to permaban players and enforce its rules
Agreed. It's possible to solve these problems, but Riot didn't care enough to solve them, or they had an underlying motivation to keep toxic players around. It does seem like a problem that's not unique to Riot, though. I think there are some structural issues in these games that makes it easy for companies to ignore the player experience in favor of just keeping people playing. It's probably similar to all the attention economy websites where they don't care if you're getting value, they only care that you're still on the platform.
yep maybe have an improved lobby where people looking to team up as 5 could LFG, get in voice comms and play together for a while. Promote making friends and preparing your party with people you trust.
My recent experience with skill based mm in team games has been similarly bad. It feels like it uses a very bad flat score-like system that makes games quickly devolve into extremely lopsided slogs because the system thinks pairing a slightly higher ranked player with some number of slightly lower ranked ones is a good match for several average ones. Practically every game I played would have most of one team's players doing exceptionally poorly with one or two doing exceptionally well, while the other, winning team would consist of mostly everyone doing averagely well.
There is usually a very small window after updates where it feels like everything gets reset and then it's possible to get some more enjoyable matches before it returns to the norm where you can probably determine who will win within the first few minutes.
you can probably determine who will win within the first few minutes.
This is a big part of the problem with a lot of these games, imo. The matches take too long to resolve, or have too much lead time to get to the part that's actually fun and dynamic. It's easy to criticize, but it's a genuine problem if half of any given match is spent either ramping up or winding down to the natural conclusion, with the other half being the game that everyone actually wants to play.
I was more talking about generalities like picking lategame powerspikes into a push lineup, or similarly drafting single target control exclusively against a mobile core and a save support.
I haven't played nor watched league enough to make an informed comparison.
The biggest difference design wise are
-variable turn rates making kiting harder, which opens up the design space for melee adcs without a dash
-denying giving reduced xp, which makes lanes with large skill gaps absolute blowouts
-most abilities are smartshot, which de-emphasizes mechanical skill in favor of macro knowledge on when to push your buttons
-woods does not spawn for the first minute, meaning that dedicated jungle isn't a thing.
The entire roster is free without any grinding, which is what made me get into it over league ten years ago.
Here is a guide for making the LOL>DOTA switch written by the most popular third party stats site:
If you understand csing, and the general concepts of vision and timings, you are over the majority of the hard part, and will likely calibrate at a higher rank than me.
SBMM is fine as an option for 1v1 games, but it's so bad for team games. It actively foments toxicity between players, and it often doesn't even work that well. I remember playing League of Legends and only one in maybe five or ten games was actually good. The rest were ruined by leavers, smurfs, toxicity, or just bad matchups that made the games lopsided. You win as many of those games as you lose, but winning lopsided games gets old.
It doesn't help that a lot of these games aren't even that much fun to begin with. A good game should be fun whether you win or lose, but a lot of these games are only really enjoyable if you're winning. The play gets overshadowed by the competition and skinner box mechanics, leaving a hollow experience for the vast majority of players.
just ban them after a couple offenses
matchmaking system should be able to detect smurfs (high KDAs, high win rates, other metrics) and boost their hidden ELO very quickly - thus making them no longer smurfs
just ban them after a couple offenses
matchmaking makes this better, not worse. without skill based matchmaking you would have even more lopsided games with even more disproportionate skills
Seems like the real issue with League is Riot's unwillingness to permaban players and enforce its rules, instead trying to retain the toxic players forever and coddling their behavior with special queues. Part of this is that toxic players pay just as much (if not more) money than other players, and the other part is that it would be expensive to hire enough GMs to actually review all the cases of toxicity in chat. The problem isn't the matchmaking, it's riot being cheap
Agreed. It's possible to solve these problems, but Riot didn't care enough to solve them, or they had an underlying motivation to keep toxic players around. It does seem like a problem that's not unique to Riot, though. I think there are some structural issues in these games that makes it easy for companies to ignore the player experience in favor of just keeping people playing. It's probably similar to all the attention economy websites where they don't care if you're getting value, they only care that you're still on the platform.
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yep maybe have an improved lobby where people looking to team up as 5 could LFG, get in voice comms and play together for a while. Promote making friends and preparing your party with people you trust.
My recent experience with skill based mm in team games has been similarly bad. It feels like it uses a very bad flat score-like system that makes games quickly devolve into extremely lopsided slogs because the system thinks pairing a slightly higher ranked player with some number of slightly lower ranked ones is a good match for several average ones. Practically every game I played would have most of one team's players doing exceptionally poorly with one or two doing exceptionally well, while the other, winning team would consist of mostly everyone doing averagely well.
There is usually a very small window after updates where it feels like everything gets reset and then it's possible to get some more enjoyable matches before it returns to the norm where you can probably determine who will win within the first few minutes.
This is a big part of the problem with a lot of these games, imo. The matches take too long to resolve, or have too much lead time to get to the part that's actually fun and dynamic. It's easy to criticize, but it's a genuine problem if half of any given match is spent either ramping up or winding down to the natural conclusion, with the other half being the game that everyone actually wants to play.
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In pickup mobas it is inevitable that ~1/3 of matches are straight up lost on the character select screen.
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Love to spend 40 minutes executing a single round of very convoluted rock paper scissors.
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If it's a hard counter and not just a skill issue, it'll be over in about a half hour, but that's a nitpick. Point taken.
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I was more talking about generalities like picking lategame powerspikes into a push lineup, or similarly drafting single target control exclusively against a mobile core and a save support.
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I am a DOTA 2 player.
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I haven't played nor watched league enough to make an informed comparison.
The biggest difference design wise are
-variable turn rates making kiting harder, which opens up the design space for melee adcs without a dash -denying giving reduced xp, which makes lanes with large skill gaps absolute blowouts -most abilities are smartshot, which de-emphasizes mechanical skill in favor of macro knowledge on when to push your buttons -woods does not spawn for the first minute, meaning that dedicated jungle isn't a thing.
The entire roster is free without any grinding, which is what made me get into it over league ten years ago.
Here is a guide for making the LOL>DOTA switch written by the most popular third party stats site:
If you understand csing, and the general concepts of vision and timings, you are over the majority of the hard part, and will likely calibrate at a higher rank than me.
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mobas need the little league mercy rule
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