In playing Season II, I've noticed that matchmaking is extremely tight. Through the second half of my games, I found myself playing the people immediately above or below my own rank.

I was curious to see if the rest of you have any thoughts on the very close matchmaking.

Some pros:

Better matchups between equally skilled opponents.
Less chance for a really bad player to upset a really good player, or for a really good player to trash a bad player for no gain (Yeon problem from Season I).

I think this system did match me very well with players of around my own skill level, and therefore resulted in good matches for the most part.

Some cons:

Very limited mobility after the first few games. People who won their first games played high ranked players, while people who lost them played low rank players. For two equally skilled players, one of which won the first game and one of which lost, the player who lost will be at a serious disadvantage throughout the season. (For clarification if anyone doesn't know what I mean, keep in mind that a loss to the top player hurts your score a little bit, while a loss to a low ranked player hurts it a lot. Conversely, beating a high ranked player helps your score a lot, while beating a low ranked player may not help it at all. If you never play low ranked players, then you are never open to the risk of a huge loss, and if you never played high ranked players, you are never able to regain that position).

If you only play against players at your own rank, your rank will only change a little bit after each game. Recovering from one or more early losses, even to good players, may take the rest of the season. Taking a further loss, or losing to someone very low ranked (which happens even to the best players on occasion), may doom a strong player. Several players who were top 10-20 on the standard ladder got stuck at low rankings this season. If they managed to play someone higher than the rank 80-100 players they were next to, they would have moved up in ranks fairly quickly. Instead, they would gain so few points for a win that they were essentially stuck, even if they won all the games they played.

That was longer than I had planned. Any thoughts on the issues?

For clarification, I think that Season II's matchmaking was far superior to Season I's. I don't think that it's quite good enough, but I wanted to open up the discussion to other people, and get more opinions.

I had been meaning to make a thread on this :P Thank you for doing it.

I agree with everything you've said. The matchmaking is too tight IMO. It has led to a lot of very good games but as you said it froze out a lot of good players because of relatively poor starts. The only way to get up the ladder was to blaze through every game ASAP to get the ranking bonus (presuming you won ofc) before your next match-up.

The tight matchmaking has also led to people holding out on losses at the top of the ladder so that they get matched against the best players possible. Minimising the risk of losing points and maximising the opportunity to gain.

I was lucky to get a high rank early on and since then the lowest I've been was 11th. 3 players in the top 10 have never fallen outside of the top 10. Obviously that's to do with their play as well as with the matchmaking system but I do think the matchmaking this season has led to some degree of stagnancy in the rankings.

I would like to stress that I think this season has been/is great, but the matchmaking needs another tweak to make it more open IMO.

P.S. I wish alababi and V had continued with the season, they'd be making me look a lot better right now XD

Hah, I also beat Alababi early on, and his rating tanked immediately after. Sadly, he managed to beat Dr. TypeSomething and the Dr. also got destroyed early on. Zaeban abandoning the ladder certainly didn't help any of the people he beat, but luckily that was later in the season. If he had beaten a couple of strong players and dropped out before game 5, he could have locked some people out of the top 10 for the rest of the season.

Zaeban beat me lol thankfully he only dropped to around 50th

If each new season could partly base match-ups on the results of previous completed seasons, the game count per season could be reduced (to avoid being like Mek Blaze: one day he woke up with about 10 new games waiting to join against 10 of the best 1v1 players) and the first few games wouldn't matter as much.

*to be joined

While that does reduce the importance of the first few games, it doesn't solve the long term problem of trying to advance in rank once you've fallen behind. Or, as a related but less serious problem, being unable to fall too far in rank because you never lose too many points at once.

Looks take the example of lobstrosity. He played 6 games in Season II, but lost his third game to a low ranked player, and fourth game to a higher ranked player. Assuming that he finished the last 14 games and won almost all of them, he still would likely be ranked lower than 30. (His actual rank is something like 103 right now). He would essentially have to fight his way all the way up the rankings by the time his 20 games were up. On the regular ladder he has all the time and games he needs to average out his win rate. For instance, on the regular ladder he lost to a guy with a rating of 1450ish shortly after joining the ladder. That didn't stop him from reaching #1, because he had far more than 20 games available in order to compensate. The regular ladder also allows for matchmaking much further from your own rank, which means a good player can beat good players and gain rank much faster.

By having the previous season help set up new season matchmaking, we would actually be making some of the problems worse. lobstrosity would be joining the new ladder with a ranking of over 100, meaning that he doesn't even get a chance to win the first few games and still compete for #1. In other words, despite being a #1 capable player, he would be locked out of contention for that spot based on his performance in the previous season.

The real culprit isn't so much the first few games, but the close matchmaking that does not allow someone to advance or fall too much, once rating has been established.

If my experience is universal, then everyone was being matched with people who were within 3 spots of themselves. If we establish an initial rating after game 10, then the number one player at game 10 could theoretically lose the next 10 games and still be ranked fairly high (having never played against a low ranking player).

The problem actually compounds itself since the top ranked players play other top ranked players, meaning that all of their ratings go up together. PaniX and Mek Blaze (for instance) boost each others ratings by having high ratings themselves, and playing each other. Then they each play Chris, who also has a high rating, and never risk a big loss of rating, win or lose they stay in the top 10.

Waya, and regrettably, Yeon, are both good examples of the problem in action right now.

Waya lost to a mediocre player early on, then lost to zibik. Then Waya beat a lot of people, but because of low rating, they weren't worth a lot of points. Waya fought up to where they could get matched with Panix (#1), and beat PaniX. Despite this, there are not enough games left for Waya to reasonably take first place. Too many games were "wasted" playing low ranked players, so Waya cannot gain enough points. Had Waya been matched with more high ranked players instead, there is a good chance that they would be in the running for first place.

Yeon has only lost one game so far, yet is completely out of the running for first place, since they took their time in early games and continued getting matched with low ranking players.

interesting topic.
I think we should wait for the end result to see the whole picture. Yeon still has 9 games to finish (out of 21 ?), he might be able to end top 3, most opponents are at 2500ish rating.
Maybe an additional pairing system could be used, based on win% or number of games won?
So 2 players who won eg. 9 out of 11 games would get paired, even if their rating gap is big.

@ Ace,
sorry for not continueing this ladder. I'm a lot bussier now, but getting 2 losses at the beginning also made me stop playing. For the reason we're talking about now. I either want to compete for the top 10 or not at all. Maybe I gave up too soon, but that was how I felt.

the only absolute solution: give all members a universal rating based on *all* of the games they have completed. then, only use this universal rating when matching opponents in the seasonal ladder.

i assume such a rating could be created ex post facto. non-members could also be rated, but making it a privilege for members to know/see their ratings on their profile would be neat.

this would serve three main functions:

- the most definitive variable in determining ladder match ups
- the most definitive open seat requirement
- the most definitive indicator of ability (when comparing players)

without a universal rating system, any other means of addressing these issues (ladder match ups, open seat requirements, comparing players) is merely patchwork that falls short one way or another.

How would this system deal with players who have improved greatly over time? *ahem*

V, it's cool I don't mind :)If you don't want to play then I would hope that you don't.

Chaos:

Yeon's problem is that they are already scheduled against every player they will be for Season II (not sure how they have 21 games though...). The highest ranked player they will face all season is Nord, ranked 18 with a 2600 rating.

Let that sink in for a moment, and realize that Yeon has zero chance of getting a game against anyone in the top 15. Even if Yeon wins every single remaining game, their wins are not going to give enough rating points to move them up 300+ rating, when half of their games are against people with lower ranking and none of them are against people with really high ranking.

But even if Yeon theoretically could get first place by winning every remaining game, why in the world should they have to? A 20-1 win record should not be required to win against people with 16-4 records. Realistically Yeon will lose 1-3 games of their remaining nine (as just about anyone would, even the highest skilled), and not even get that chance.

Had Yeon blasted through every win as quickly as possible and delayed their loss, they would have been facing top ranked people. Playing games more slowly (and carefully) means not getting pitted against the top players who won their first games and moved on.

Well I am not sure that this type of complaining is constructive...

The problems mentioned cannot be realistically solved using current formula of the seasonal ladder without coming back to the problems from last season. Current ladder can be thought of as a variation of swiss system. The main problem is that swiss system is extremely effective, but cannot handle things like joining the ladder late, finding/playing multiple opponents etc. The problems you mention will always remain as long as there can be an imbalance between games played/new opponents found. Fizzer responded to last season's critique in a timely manner and I don't see what else can be done...

If nothing else the matchmaking can find opponents further away from your current rank (though not as far as during Season I). I am fairly confident that Fizzer could find an even better solution behind the scenes, but even this fix would be helpful.

I fully realize that no system will be perfect for these purposes.

what might be fun: everyone plays 15 or so games to get a ranking. then the top 64 ranked players are invited to a double- or single-elimination tournament. most people would only play the regular season games. the top 64 would play 1-5 playoff games.

such tournaments are hard to win. but the best tend to rise to the top. and everyone has a chance to win.

I'm not a member and probably never will be so this issue isn't making any difference to my experience/enjoyment of Warlight, but I have been reading this thread with interest.

An idea that popped into my head would be for players to be able to choose their opponents, to a degree. Not 100%, but a system that could run alongside the current one.

Basically, any player could 'challenge' any other to a game that counts towards the seasonal ladder. The player being challenged would have no obligation to accept this challenge if they didn't want to. The current system would still remain, with any 'challenge' game taking the place of one auto game if accepted.

It could reward players brave enough to challenge people around or above them. It could lead to bigger moves in the standings. Players at the top could evaluate the risk/reward of playing someone near the bottom.

I do realise that there would be scope for manipulation of the system... but as that seems to be a hot topic at the minute, it would be nothing new. If people are sneakily taking advantage of flaws in the system now, why not 'legalise' it making the choice of who you play an extra tactical consideration in the ladder?

And then, as I was writing this, another thought popped into my head. Multiple accounts/friends helping each other would absolutely destroy any credibility in the whole thing.

So you should probably just forget everything that I've just written.

Sorry to have wasted your time.

It's clear that Fizzer has at least greatly changed the formula for matchmaking, as he said he would! Previous season I was at the top through the entire season, and didn't get high enough rated opposition to have a chance at first place (since I won all 15 and came 2nd).

This season I didn't intend to play since I have a lot on my plate these days, but we were all auto-joined and then I decided to play when I had time for games.

I see the point that strategically, I shouldn't have surrendered my lost game until all my games were generated, and I did think about it, but I felt that kind of thing would've been in bad taste (especially so since I played pwn-trockerz who is one of the most prompt players on the site, dragging out his game would be unfair).

Personally, I think there's something wrong with the rating system used overall, but the most constructive suggestion I have is this: When calculating the rating of a player, assume all their opponents have played 20+ games (even if they haven't). Otherwise, one of the biggest factors deciding a player's rating is whether or not their opponents actually finish 20 games, and I don't think that has anything at all to do with a player's skill (in fact, if it does, then the strongest players get weaker rating this way because they crush opponents into losing faith and quit the season).

Anyway, I suppose it's clear that I wouldn't have gotten 1st even with 21-0 this season - and I don't think I will be anywhere close to that.

Good luck to everyone still in the running!