Where does the Future of Live Anywhere Matchmaking Lie?

The most ideal solution (yet probably the worst for the programming side) would be to have both concepts, pc-like servers for clans and people that know each other already while having auto matchmaking for the more casual players. I know its a pain, but I do nto see at the moment a solution that leaves more or less everyone satisfied

I really like the idea behind the "Halo-type" matchmaking procedure (where you just enter, and the system selects the players, the maps, and the game style). This is basically the system that is also used by the PGR3 online career mode. "Server-browsing" based systems, in my experience, lead to the same maps/tracks used over and over again, bumping of players for inscrutable reasons, and all kinds of other issues.

In practice, however, there are some big problems with this matchmaking system, especially when used in games that are not quite as popular as Halo. I’ll illustrate based on PGR3, as that’s where I have the most experience, and it’s the game where the "True Skill" system is the most visible:

- In PGR3 they started out with a pretty loose matchmaking system, resulting in quick matches, but too wide a spread in abilities. Combined with the too-easy spinning of cars in PGR3 (before the updates) this led to a lot of complaints about high-level players being spun-out by low-level players, resulting in a big loss in ranking points.

- After a few months, PGR3 got an auto-update that tightened the matchmaking considerably. Combined with a daily rotating system of user-selectable track types based not on global time, but on local time, this meant that it could take people an hour to find a race, if they could find one at all. Especially for high-ranked players it became (and still is) basically impossible to find a ranked race.

- This has resulted in the current situation where many consider the online career in PGR3 (which is the game’s only ranked online play mode) to be dead. They only solution the developers of the game have given so far for this problem, is to go to the unranked "playtime" mode of PGR3, basically admitting that the ranked mode has become obsolete…

So the question is, in games that do not have the number of users of Halo, how do you create an "automatic" matchmaking system that is both tight enough to be meaningful and still doesn’t have too long waiting times? I haven’t seen a 360 game that really has solved this…

Another issue is the TrueSkill system, used by some 360 games for their ranking. It really is a great mathematical ranking system, but my issue with it is that it’s too good! In PGR3 it puts you at your "true" skill-based ranking after a very small number of races, and after that it’s very hard to make any progress at all, simply because increasing a real-life skill takes a lot of serious effort, which is not always fun to go through. The fact is, that if a game use sthe TrueSkill rank as its only visible means of progression or reward, you won’t be playing the game very long…

I think it’s important to have a mix.  Halo 2 definitely took things to a new level.  For ranked games it should be matchmaking only, keeps it fair, no boosting and stuff like that.  I think matchmaking should be in unranked, but you should be able to to look at different unranked games going on and join up.

My friends and I really would like to set up an online "party/guild group" where we take on all comers.  We host the match, and if there are any same-sized groups or smaller, set us up against each other, or alternatively place us against all pubs.  

Basically let us play as a team against all comers.  :)

As far as matchmaking for skill, etc.  You know, it doesn’t matter that much to me. . .  but I’m on the top of the skill plateau with the majority of gamers who are all good or bad based on which weapon you put us near.

That is. . .  unless the pistol is back in Halo 3.  Then we’ll start to see people who can pull away and be the best based on reflexes instead of just luck and knowing how to play each map (item locations, spawn points, snipe points, etc.)

I just find it hard to believe that you need a super-advanced system for Halo 2 skill-sorting.  You’ve got players who know how to aim and how to look for the vibrosword and players who don’t.  :)  

Halo 2′s matchmaking is the only thing that makes online games playable for me. The ability to quickly jump into a game, my team vs. anyone, without having to pick a map or gametype is essential. When you’re playing custom games, you end up getting lazy and playing the same type on the same map all night. With matchmaking playlists, it’s always a surprise. I’d rather NOT have server brosers, because it just confuses things – why have an outdated system like that competing with the other system. Never have two ways to do something when you can just have the best solution. Let Sony pander to the server-browser types.

Great comments – keep them coming!

One question that comes up for me after reading so far: do you think we need different matchmaking systems for different platforms (say Xbox 360 and Windows) or not? Is it possible to have a single system that most of you would be happy with?

Ozymandius – That depends on how FPS games are implemented on the console vs. the PC.  

I played Shadow run on the 360 and the PC at E3, and the way these developers got away with using the console and actually making it better in some instances was to not really use precision weaponry and instead focusing on the adept use of special abilities to get the drop on your opponent.

That was pretty cool, but if every console/Windows FPS starts discounting the ability to use a high precision weapon to great effect, then people will grow sick of the gimmick.

For instance, have you ever played Halo 1 on the PC?  If you have, then you probably know that it is like playing in easy mode. . .  Suddenly master-chief becomes a crack-shot unable to miss on headshots and you find yourself throwing away shotguns to pick up a pistol or anything that lets you actually aim.  Also, Mastercheif’s run speed was still set for the console game and he felt like a lumbering turtle on the PC.

Live Anywhere is great, but your going to alienate PC gamers if we all have to move super-slow (for a PC game) and you never give us precision weaponry because our control setup makes us far too overpowered with precision weapons.  Likewise, if you DO give PC gamers these options, you’ll anger console gamers who will get bent over and made to squeal like it’s pledge week all year long.

Sure, do some cross-platform games and compromise between the two groups with games that rely heavily on special skills like Shadowrun, but keep them separate when it makes more sense to do so, and then keep their matching systems separate too.

Another big disparity with PC games is that dedicated PC servers will generally be able to host more players than a 360 that is running the game and acting as a listen server. . .  how do you work with that?

Also, if PC users are playing on a 360 that is acting as a listen server, what happens to their game experience when the host 360 turns off the game?  I know that with other 360s there is only the most brief interruption while the next best possible host in the game becomes the server host.  Will the PC programs be able to handle this the same way?  Will they simply get disconnected while the 360 players continue to play, or will we lose the feature altogether in order to accomodate PC players?

Live Anywhere is actually going to be quite an undertaking. . .   cool stuff.  :)

Hehehe…

As far as how to set things up, I think for ranked matches, leaderboards, and the like, Halo 2′s matchmaking system is perfect.  You shouldn’t have any control over who you’re going up against, except maybe in the clan setting.  Still, if you allow clans to choose their opponents for ranked matches, it becomes too easy to inflate your rank, which would lead to cheating, which would lead to more time and effort put into banning accounts that were cheating.

However, as I know the Xbox Live community knows, there’s different kind of playstyles out there.  While people in the "pro" or "underground" gamerzone might want to do ranked matches all of the time, the people in the "recreation" gamerzone (much like myself) would rather just hop from room to room meeting people.  Halo 2 had the unranked games, but they worked just like matchmaking, and as soon as you were done with the match, the room was deleted and you had to start over with a whole new room.  It would be nice if games could implement a matchmaking system for ranked games, and public rooms created by users for unranked games.

I don’t know if that’s asking for too much, though.  I don’t know a whole lot about coding, especially in the online multiplayer field.  I’m amazed I actually know what a Boolean is. =P

I suppose the big issue with the PC community is that they like having their own private servers so people can hop in and out and know exactly where to find each other.  I don’t really see that being too much of a problem, though, if Live Anywhere will bring a Xbox Live style friends list to Windows games(much like Xfire(although don’t quote me on that, I’ve never used it.)).  It’s pretty easy to set up a room with your friends on Xbox Live, especially in Halo 2.  That kind of friends list would, in my mind, nullify the need for private servers.

The only OTHER thing, though, (and I know I’m rambling now) is that PC gamers very much like mods to their games.  If PC gaming gets set up like the current system for Xbox 360, where it’s all but impossible to use mods without breaking the Terms of Service, this could be an issue.  Ask Battlefield 1942 players and I bet a lot of them will mention Desert Combat.  Hell, didn’t Counter-Strike start off as a mod?

It’s a tricky situation, but I really think that setting up standardized rooms(in the ways I outlined in this first part of this incoherent comment) would be ideal for both PC and console gaming.  I DO think PC gamers should have the option for private servers, however, so they can play games with mods.  Perfect world would be that a modding community becomes present with the 360 community, but I’m pretty sure we’re still pretty far away from that.

Hopefully this all made sense, I have a tendancy to just type and type away. =)

lol, bring "Live Anywhere" over to Mac OS X and then you really get credit from me!

And tell the Shadowrun team that despite the fact that it looks REALLY cool and fun… they need to make an RPG after that.  More specifically they need to emulate the old Sega Genesis Shadowrun game with its open ended gameplay and upgrades and awesome netrunning interface.  Only good hacking in any console game ever.

Kinda funny I had the idea for the very game they are making now, except with more RPG elements, long before it was even announced.  I would have gone with first person view for mercs, third person for mages, riggers, samurai and hackers.  Allow the classes to play off each other, example the hacker breaks into the system and watches the real world action on a small window (ala GRAW) while his friends protect his back as he hacks (or manipulates the security, turrents, so forth).  Mage shields the mercs and buffs people, etc. etc.  Samurai plays like the melee combat in Unreal Championship 2. Would have been awesome.

sublime78 – If it helps, I actually said the same thing to one of the lead developers of the game whose name I forget (he has a mohawk) at E3.

They seem really tired of hearing that.  :)

I think Halo 2′s system is very near to being perfect in its ability to match players up quickly, and get them playing right away.  The perfect setup would have the 8 or so broad playlists that Bungie has implemented, and customs would be a whole different setup.  Right now, your options hosting a custom game are OPEN, INVITE ONLY, and CLOSED.  In order to cater to the Optimatch lovers, make 4 options: OPEN(ALL), OPEN(FRIENDS), INVITE ONLY, CLOSED.  This way, a player would have the choice of going into matchmaking and playing objective or slayer games quickly.  They could also join their friend’s parties, to enter matchmaking together or play a custom game. Lastly, if they were in the mood for a certain gametype, but it doesn’t exist on any playlists, and none of their friends are online/want to play, that player could search the network’s customs games that are currently OPEN(ALL).  Needless to say, the searching criteria would have to be pretty sophisticated.

Hope that made sense.

"One question that comes up for me after reading so far: do you think we need different matchmaking systems for different platforms (say Xbox 360 and Windows) or not? Is it possible to have a single system that most of you would be happy with?"

Well, speaking of (roughly) a system of bit coordinated interchange the hardware on both sides do not have to be identical. Its like when you request a web page, you do not mind what system is handling that request, you simply get the final information despite even the program you are using for it (again, roughly). Technically it should not really matter whatever machine do the customers use, so I do think the system should be the same for PC, X360, and whatever else you think that should be there.

I agree though that how its implemented its kind of tricky. Problem is that in an ‘universal’ system you have more to lose than to win probably. Aiming only for auto-matchmaking drops somehow (for what I’ve understood, I have to admit that even if I do own an old xbox y do not have a live account) clans and other community congregations. Making only a traditional system of clients joining stablished servers complicates things for the casual gamers, specially those without experience in old pc-style netplaying (I guess there is quite some people that do not even know what an IP adress is, and they certainly shouldn’t be forced to learn about it just to play a couple races on PGR). An what might be the worst of all, how will developers adopt the system, and if they will actually use it or will they still prefer their intrincate methods of netplaying (UT2004 anyone?)

bean, probably so, still.. do you know what its like to CRAVE a game for damn near 15 years, seriously doubt its ever going to be made and then finally find out it is being made except its a first person shooter instead of a role playing game?  Actually I’m guessing you do.

Like I said, it looks COOL! Just nowhere near as cool and groundbreaking as it could be if they at least tried to make it some what role playing.  I’ll buy it either way but that doesn’t stop me from being disapointed.  I mean, we have shooters out the wazoo these days, a good deep action role playing experience is hard to find. I see no reason why it couldn’t have been an action packed first person game and still held true to the RPG roots of it, instead we get Shadowrun: Battlefield edition.  But some Shadowrun is better than no Shadowrun I guess.

Why can’t there be an option for both? I sort of like the Halo opti-match feature. However, sometimes I would like to host my own games and find my own game. I think that both should be implemented because you will always leave someone out if you don’t.

I’ve only played Halo 2 online once, so I can’t really comment on how its matchmaking works, but when I want to play a game online, I want to see a combination of GRAW and Prey’s pre-lobby system.

I pick the type of game I want to play (deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF, whatever), possibly narrowing the options to the specific type (number of users, "match my packages"). I then get a list of available servers showing a simple 5-icon connection quality indicator. This is all done correctly by GRAW.

What Prey does better is actually let you join the darned game even if it’s already started. In GRAW you’ll have to wait for the game to finish while listening to the others in the game having fun.

Now if I can limit the number of available games to only those containing people of a certain skill, that’s fine, but it has to be optional. At times it’s just more fun to play with/against people who are lots better than me, and sometimes I’d rather be with folks with the same skill.

The trick is finding out what a person’s skill is. I mean, you can’t have people pick their own skill or they’ll say they’re worse than they are so they’ll get to play lesser-skilled people in ranked matches. A score keeping system would have to be implemented in the single-player and unranked matches.

If you haven’t got a registered skill for a game and want to play ranked games, you get thrown in with the lowest skilled players available.

I hope I didn’t completely miss the point of this post, ’cause I do have that problem every now and then

By the way, here’s the link to the full story on TeamXbox: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/11456/Halo-2-Matchmaking-Playlist-Improvements/

Oh, and Andre, the "remember me" checkbox doesn’t seem to do anything for me.

Imagined Bug, your fusion of GRAW and Prey basically described Halo 2′s custom game system, the only drawback is that you have to have friends playing customs

Hey Ozy.

Ok I hate the idea of their being like one million servers with people doing their own custom adjustments to their games on the PC. With a match making type like halo’s, I feel more thrilled after I’ve won a game (any one agree?). On the other side, when I’m hosting a game, I would like for others to see and be able to join it. Therefor I think that when you are taking part in a ranked match for example, it should be the Halo style  macthmaking, but there should also be an option for the Pc Style servers for friendly games. Pass that on will you ozy

Hey Ozy.

Ok I hate the idea of their being like one million servers with people doing their own custom adjustments to their games on the PC. With a match making type like halo’s, I feel more thrilled after I’ve won a game (any one agree?). On the other side, when I’m hosting a game, I would like for others to see and be able to join it. Therefor I think that when you are taking part in a ranked match for example, it should be the Halo style  macthmaking, but there should also be an option for the Pc Style servers for friendly games. Pass that on will you ozy

Yo Ozy.

In my opinion, xbox live should leave the choice to the gamers.  For example, Halo 2 would have matchmaking or, "optimatch" and also have the traditional PC choice where a player may choose a specific game to enter.  By having both of these, gamers will have more things to do which will make the game’s actually life more lasting.  It will satisfy all gamers without question.  Think about it Ozy.

I would love to see an implementation of both systems.  Sometimes, matchmaking is great.  However, most of the time I want to manually find a server.

If I had to choose one or the other, I would have to go w/ the traditional PC-style server finder.  I for one hate the fact that Halo 2 is missing that system.  Custom games in Halo 2 are great, but, there is no way of finding the custom games.

I like the old pick your own server method…but alot of times I just want a quick fix…so how about both?? a quick fix kind of option or an option to browse servers.

Maybe I’m dumb, and I certainly don’t read product manuals anymore (mostly because they are even dumber than me), but I find the ranking system on XBL to be arcane in the extreme. Better in-game descriptions of what is actually happening when you ar searching for a game or trying to improve your rank would improve usability.

I lied. In trying to figure out the ranking and matching system, I’ve read the manuals for Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero, and Burnout Revenge. All of these employ similar terms, but seem to define them differently. If there are certain actions you need to take to get matching to "work," I’m guessing that XBL has a problem with concept adoption, as none of my friends have a clue about it either.

We’re all quite lazy, too.

I want to play with my friends on ranked games so way dose all games on both xbox and 360 don’t support clan options ? its a smart way to play ranked games with friends. and u don’t need to go around the system in games like ghost recon 3 or BFME2 to do so!

its just stupid the way u handle online gaming 4the moment.

sure Halo2 works fine and even EA manage 2 pot a small option 4 clan wars on Battelfield2 modern combat but way didn’t they pot that option on BFME2?

Sorry fore my extremely bad English (from Sweden

Bungie once described their party system as a "virtual couch" where you and your pals would get together and then venture into whatever gametype you want.  The party system should be built into the 360 SDK so that all developers can use it without having to develop their own (inferior, unpolished) implementation.

I was surprised when I found 360 games that didn’t support matchmaking in the same format either.  It is an innovation that has moved the tired formula of "search for server X with gametype Y, join, invite friends, hope they can squeeze in, wait for server to start".  That was gaming then … H2 is gaming now.

Make the lobby and matchmaking algorithms part of the 360 SDK.  Advance the 360 "platform".  Use bungie as your R&D since they are innovating ….

It only makes sense!

As far as ranked vs. unranked … I think rank is a very important stat that helps make games enjoyable for everyone since it lets players play against similiar skilled ppl.  Isn’t that really the goal?  Hide the rank though.  Show it online if you want, but not on the console.  It just serves as a point for posturing and for cheating when others can see it.  Replace the need for posturing with achievements.

Oh .. one more thing.  To address the multiple platform thing and how to pander to both markets …. don’t worry about it.  If you make auto-hosting work well based on bandwidth, the big servers will pop out over time.  And again, the bottom line is not:

a) who the server is

b) what the server gametype is

But instead, the goal is:

a) is the bandwidth enough to support the # of gamers (auto-host)

b) can i select my gametype desired and find other players interested in the same gametype (matchmaking)

c) can i do all of this with my friends that I want to play with intact and following me the ENTIRE TIME (party system)

I thought matchmmaking was a marvel, since it allowed my friends and I to remain together as a party and be carried into one game and the next by our leader. Keep that easy-to-play concept by all means. Some of my ideas:

1) I would make the ranking system transparent rather than visible. I like the idea of matching people by their ability. However, ever since that was exposed with a visible rank, some unscrupulous people then began de-ranking so they could game with less skillfull opponents.

Truly using the 360′s gamerzone settings (pro, underground, rec) might alleviate some of the problems.

2) I might even like the ability to re-match all players. If there was a good, close game someone could click a button to launch a yes/no popup asking if everyone wants to play another match together rather than being dumped back into the match queue. Then that group (or a subset) would be rematched.

3) If matchmmaking exists much the way it does now, keep those wonderfully broad playlists of all different types. There’s some great 2×2, 4×4, objective-only lists that are wonderful to jump into when I feel in the mood. Sometimes I just want to play something simple and fulfills the craving.

4) The ability for players to "vote" on a favorite map. This might muck with the way the matchmaking algorithm chooses a good map for your group, but I’d love to have some choice to at least say what map I would NOT want to play.

I love Halo 2′s matchmaking system because being an older gamer (in my 30s) not too many of my friends are into online gaming.

I hate the PC/Server system the Ubisoft uses which is trial and error to find a good match where people are not cheating or are not so incredibly coordinated as a team so as to make it impossible to compete as an individual.

My only suggestion for the Halo 2 system would be an "opt out" function giving the gamer the ability to opt out of 1 or 2 gametypes or levels.  I think this would help with the amount of players that quit in the first few seconds of a match because they dislike a certain level or gametype.

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