Summary of Halo Netcode talk at GDC by David Rosen

[mannon]

One of the guys at Wolfire posted his summary of the talk metioned above. It's not really in depth, but it is an interesting read about Halo netcode.

blog.wolfire.com/2011/03/GDC-Session-Summary-Halo-networking

[eLantern]

Interesting stuff.

Though, one thing I have wondered with the release of Halo: Reach was why didn't Bungie incorporated a "Join Active Session" type of matchmaking system like those offered in many other FPS games. A system which would allow players to join and leave active sessions would prevent a "wasted time" effect or feeling that players get in Halo matchmaking games where teammates quit early and leave the remaining players basically screwed over. Bungie's attempt to prevent quitters by installing a penalty system isn't nearly enough to motivate people to not quit games. I believe their matchmaking system is rooted in tradition more so than in some real world practical reasoning. However, after reading that article I wonder if maybe there's some sort of practical reason why they stuck with their traditional matchmaking system verses adopting the more mainstream system being adopted by most FPS games today. Unfortunately, the article's brief explanation of the 2-hour sit down didn't touch on this subject. I will continue to hope that future Bungie games and future Halo titles will adopt the "Join Active Session" matchmaking system with minor tweaks to prevent penalties or gifts to late session joiners.

[n1gh7]

Bungie's lack of a "Join Active Session" is very deeply rooted in the competitive tradition of the franchise.

[mannon]

I sort of dislike joining games in progress. On the other hand it opens up more possible lobbies, which means the game could potentially find better lobbies. And it really does suck balls when your teammates quit on you. You should at least get some crummy bots or something. Or at least be allowed to quit without a penalty if you're teammates already left you screwed.

Alternatively perhaps it could alter the spawning so that players on the team that outnumber you have to spectate and can only spawn when the number of their teammates alive drops below the number of players on your team. They could essentially take turns fighting your team keeping players on the bench so that the teams are fair. If spectating players got tired of waiting they could drop or switch teams.

Something, though... Anything would be better. Yeah I've still only played two games online, but in both games we were outnumbered... (In the first game literally all my teammates dropped and left me to fight 1 on 4 all by myself! How is that competitive?)

Oh well, though...

[eLantern]

@ mannon -

I also don't care for joining games in progress, but the real reason I don't like it is because there are penalties for doing so or at least there are in Call of Duty.

If I join a game in which I have no chance of winning I will be credited with a loss... how is that fair?
If I join a game which is pretty much wrapped up and won I will be awarded a win... how is that right?

I believe a "Join Active Session" matchmaking system should be designed and incorporated by all FPS games where players who are automatically injected into game sessions that are already "in progress" will have a specific layout that will govern a level of fairness.

Joining a game "in progress" in which the team that is joined is already losing and is never able to acquire the lead at any time prior to the end of the match will not credit the players who joined while the game was "in progress" with the loss. However, that circumstance changes for players who join a match that is "in progress" if the team manages to take the lead at some point after their joining. If the team managed to take the lead, but still goes on to lose the match, then those players will be subject to a loss. If they go on to win the match then obviously they are credited with the win.

In situations where the team a player joined was winning a match and went on to win the match while never relinquishing the lead, the deciding factor in determining if that player should be credited with a win on their statistical record would be based on the length of time they were on the team in relation to the match's total time played.
Example: If the game ended within a specific amount of time (lets say "X" amount of time), then that player would have had to be playing with that team for at least 1/3 (or maybe 1/4 - well, whatever the developers would feel was best for their game) of that entire match's length of play time ( again, "X" amount of time) in order to have that win count toward their lifetime record.

In any case, all of the other game stats such as Kills, Deaths, Assists, Objectives, Medals or whatever will still count toward a player's lifetime statistical record no matter when they join a match.

On a side note; players who quit or leave a match while their team is losing will incur a lose on their record and a strike. Accumulate to many strikes and a player will suffer a penalty, perhaps something like reseting or knocking them back a prestige or rank... whatever would seem appropriate. Continuous and large amounts of accumulated strikes will bring harsher penalties. This should help reduce a players willingness to simply quit a match, it obviously won't stop them, nothing can. Hopefully, it makes them think twice before making it a habit.

[mw0swedeking]

Is there really a need for an elaborate system of counting the loss? Why not just make it so all games joined late don't count as losses... or wins for that matter. The W/L stat isn't really taken that seriously anyway.

However it gets handled, I would rather be thrown into games at the final score screen than do what Black Ops did all the time the first few months (it has gotten better recently hasn't it?)- where you end up with 3 man FFAs or 1v5 team gametypes. Not only are those games immensely boring and/or onesided, but it also hurts SPM, and that's kinda a more important stat since it's linked to your overall rank.

[n1gh7]

% of time in game = amount of win/loss. In game 100% of the game? 1 win/loss. in for 50%? .5 win/loss. I like that system.

[mannon]

I think I might buy into something like that. If you join a game and only play 10% of the game you have very low odds of actually having been able to influence the outcome of that game, but then again it only goes as 10% of a single win or loss on your record. Really when it comes down to it you're either going to get saddled with a game that you have no hope of affecting the outcome on or if you're lucky you'll drop into a game that's close and maybe you have a chance to do something

Then again perhaps that score disparity should be considered somehow. Perhaps as a second multiplier dropped on top of the time multiplier. I think you'd have to weigh it based on the absolute value of the difference in the scores. It sounds more complicated than it is, really.

If the scores are tied when you join the game then your W/L score modifier will be 100% multiplied by the time played modifier.

If one team has a lead then it's going to be based on that difference, divided by the score needed to win the match. In other words if one team had 0 and the other team had the winning score then the score modifier would be 0%. Of course that should only ever happen if you join a match but then aren't able to spawn before the score limit is reached. Usually the score modifier will be a number between 0% and 100%. Keep in mind only the score when you join the match is considered for the score modifier. It is merely a measure of how close the game was when you joined, and thus how much opportunity you may have had to influence the outcome. You should still use the time modifier.

I think the score modifier would be more fair, but I don't know if I'd like to use JUST it without the time modifier, although if you used both together then you might want to weaken the weighting on one or both of them.

Note: The score modifier I suggest does not reward players for coming from behind. it is not a reward system. it is based on the assumption that the stronger the disparity in scores when you join the game the less (on average) contribution you were able to make to the eventual outcomes of those matches, one way or the other. In other words if your team is far behind you aren't punished much for the loss, but also aren't credited much for a victory. The formula assumes even if you do win that match that it probably didn't have all that much to do with you.

Of course, we could do some more complicated stuff to try to determine how much you actually do contribute, but I think that may just overcomplicated it. In fact I'm not even sure I'm really advocating it against just purely using the time based modifier Night suggests. I'm just sorta brainstorming and it's actually a pretty simple and strait forward formula.


Of course even join in progress wouldn't necessarily fix the thing that irks me... and that is people dropping games and leaving their teammates high and dry. It might help, but wouldn't fix it. I've only played two multiplayer games, but in both of them my team wound up outnumbered and in the first one it was 1 on 4! Hardly fair. If your team drops on you then you should be able to drop without taking a loss or it going on your dropped games record.

Alternatively they could give you incentives to keep playing that 1 on 4 match like bonus cR, or maybe even a bonus score so that you actually have some chance of winning the match. Though I kinda like my suggestion earlier of forcing them to only be able to spawn the same number of players as you have on your team and thus making the match fair, while still preserving the teams. (They just have to take turns, at least after the first few deaths. They'd still have the 4 on 1 advantage until you killed some of them, but I don't think that's so terrible as long as you can whittle them down. It's also sort of self balancing in that if they have one guy on their team that's just a lot better than you, he's probably not going to die and will thus be the one still killing you. Though his teammates might get bored.)

Perhaps if there were a system where you could offer to forfeit the game and if they accept then they automatically win. You'd take a loss, but not get a dropped game on your record. Of course that also relies on them not being dicks, but I think if your team is outnumbered by X margin then so long as your team votes to forfeit then it shouldn't need approval from the opposing team.

You would have to put safeguards into place to make sure people didn't abuse forfeits for cR, so there would likely be some cR penalties involved, more so on the forfeiting team than the opposing one. That way you're naturally discouraging people from forfeiting, but not discouraging opposing teams from accepting forfeits. You would probably also want some time related safegaurds such as only allowing certain kinds of forfeits after a certain amount of time and/or cR penalties for early forfeits.

It just seems really silly to me that you are basically forced to play out unfair matches. That's not competitive at all. There's no sportsmanship in that. In RL sports if enough players are injured or otherwise removed from the game that you can no longer make even teams generally the game is automatically forfeit. I'm not saying it should always be exactly even teams. That's a nearly impossible standard online. But at the very least 2 to 1 or worse is not remotely fair.

Of course another possibility would be to simply change the gametype on the fly. For example if you start up a 4 on 4 game and 3 players drop from one team early on then if you aren't going to do anything else about it why not just default back to FFA? Sure it's not what you signed up to play, but you didn't sign up to get raped in a 4:1 game either!

Or in some cases it might work to split the opposing team. For example if only two players dropped and it was 2 on 4 then the 4 player team could be split into 2 teams and you'd have 3 even teams. if somebody else dropped making the teams unfair again then it could go FFA.

Just about anything is better than doing nothing about it... Especially considering parties... In my first game where my 3 teammates dropped I believe that there were 2 on the opposing team and 2 on my team that all had the same clan tags. My theory is that the entire opposing team and at least those 2 guys if not all 3 on my team were all in the same party just looking for a schmuck to get stuck with them in matchmaking. Since the game type was max 8 players they were guaranteed to have party members on my team to screw me over by A killing me and B dropping once I booted the guy that killed me. And considering the fact that I had the option of booting him after only being team killed once suggests that he's done it quite a bit... Sounds to me like they're abusing the game to get artificially easy wins.

Of course if it happens again I don't think I'll even try to kill them. Just make them play hide and seek with me and waste as much of their time as I can, then report them.

That sort of BS should not be allowed or possible, however. I've had some crummy things done to me in CoD, but honestly that is lower than anything I've witnessed there.

Obviously the penalties for team killing and dropping games weren't enough to discourage them...