BO2: skill based leagues confirmed

[wittyscorpion]

UPDATE (10/08):

Did some Google searches and found the following:

"David vahndehaar has comfirmed there will be two playlists within league play. One that is 6v6 with killstreaks enabled, another that is 4v4 without killstreaks. He did mention that not all maps in the game will be played in the league playlist. Also the 6v6 playlist can be played solo, while the 4v4 cannot."

and this article published on 08/30: www.clkclq.com/?p=151

and this Q&A with OpTic Ray Rambo:

callofdutyesports.com/optic-ray-rambo-does-black-ops-2-qa/#/vanilla/discussion/embed/?vanilla_discussion_id=0


UPDATE (10/08):

From this video: Optic_NadeShot SR and SMG game play and interview



He revealed the following about League Play: there are 2 types of leagues: 6v6 and 4v4.

------
UPDATE:

The video mentioned below has been taken out. Below are my notes of what I saw in the video that are related to League Play:

On the upper left side:

FIND MATCH: find a match against similarly skilled opponents
CHANGE LEAGUE: choose league to compete in
CREATE A CLASS: customize your loadout (When doing this, the players seemed to have all items at his disposal. So it is possible (and likely) that all items are unlocked in League Play to ensure total fairness)

SCORE STREAKS

Middle left:

TEAM IDENTITY
LEAGUE LADDER

Lower left:

TWL (Treyarch World League): this is probably a placeholder for region based league setup.

Once the game ships, you probably will see different choices like "Americas", "Europe", "Asia", etc just like SC2 on Battle.net

Lower right:

1) 4 Placement Matches Required, with "4" inside a pentagon shaped icon.

I believe once a player played all placement matches and have a "division" assigned, this will change to the corresponding division icon

2) "Solo: ShruggedPage70"

I believe that this indicates that the current entity in League Play is "solo" player ShruggedPage70 (gamer tag)

Should this be a party, it probably will be something like "Party: player1-gamer-tag, player2-gamer-tag, ..." or "Team: player1-gamer-tag, player2-gamer-tag, ..."

----
UPDATE, new video that gives a glimpse of what "League Play" screen looks like:


You can see the "League Play" screen at the very beginning and very end.

-----
UPDATE (based on Joystiq interview video at www.joystiq.com/2012/08/29/treyarch-game-design-director-david-vonderhaar-talks-black-ops-2/, between 2:10 and 4:56):

"League Play works like this: when you play, you do what we call placement matches. What that allows us to do is to try to understand how good you are relative to the entire player population. Once you have gone through your placement matches, we will actually put you into a division of skill. So if you are in the middle, you might be in something
like the silver division by way of example. What that is is a smaller community of players around your skill level using skill-based match making. We put you there so you are competing with people at your level. When you are playing with people at your level the games are actually fun because you'll win half of the time and lost half of the time."

After repeating what he said several times in the past on how great "skill-based" match-making is going to be, he went on and said

"This (League Play) is a very transparent experience. You don't have to go create a team on a web site or schedule a match to meet at 3:30. You go to the League Play, press a button to select the league you are playing, and this is just happening and we will just take care of it"

"League Play does NOT replace the normal matchmaking experience that you know. that still exists... as the core experience" (vs. League Play as a new experience that they will put into a separate place and see how successful it can be without jeopardizing the core experience the players know and love. Just like what the did in BO1 to make Wager Matches and Combat Training separate, and because they were successful in BO2 they are now part of the core experience)

-----
UPDATE:

In League Play: "A team can come together and play games to earn skill rating of which they will always move up a league and get into a new division"

Source: www.charlieintel.com/2012/08/21/black-ops-2-innovates-with-league-play-and-cod-casting/

UPDATE:

"BO2's League Play is similar to SC2's system, in how players are ranked, how games are played. Will have similar settings and similar matchmaking as SC2."

Source: Machinima VS - OpTic Nadeshot 's YouTube video:



Not sure what his source is.

UPDATE:

The game supports traditional matchmaking as you know it and league play separately.

Source: oneofswords.com/2012/08/16153/

UPDATE:

In-depth article: www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3230713/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-esports-shoutcasting-league-play

UPDATE:

This is now officially confirmed by the BO2 twitter:

Roy Brown ‏@valort: "@blackopsiinews will there be ranked and unranked playlists?"

‏@blackopsiinews: "@valort_ There are no unranked playlists but there is League Play, a new skill-based matchmaking system that sorts players into divisions."

I am sure that everybody is wondering how this could work out (how to measure skills, how to prevent cheating, etc, etc, etc). Look forward to seeing more details on this.


-----
UPDATE:

08/13 teaser from David Vonderhaar's tweet:



"Top 2%. Or as I refer to it ... possibly better than @opticscumpii. Are you World or Pro? "

Also just for completeness, here are the other emblems that appeared in his earlier tweets:



In the order of appearance: Left -> right, top -> bottom.

Tweets that went along with them:

Top right: I have 2 Silver guns, one for each of ya.
Bottom left: Gold, getting gold.
Bottom mid: 3 stars, not bad, not bad at all
Bottom right: < 18%

----
David Vonderhaar from Treyarch has been twitting teasers recently, and TMarTn made a video to hypothesize that BO2 could be introducing Truskill skill based ranking, and/or skill based leagues based on TruSkill system:



Looks like for this year's holiday season on XBL it is going to be the battle of BO2 vs. Halo4 to compete for players' play time, and hopefully both will try to make a move on introducing some form of skill-based matchmaking. Whichever game can pull it off would have a significant edge.

[Megaqwerty]

If true, hopefully, it is only a particular playlist or particular subset of playlists for many reasons.

One massive pro of this is that a competitive playlist would be a huge vehicle for weapon balance.

If a Grand Master makes some comments on balance, he probably knows what he's talking about. Meanwhile, we can automatically tune out all the cries of OP coming from the kids in Wood league.

Meanwhile, Treyarch will have a direct correlation between weapon use/tactics and skill, allowing them to see what not only the community is doing but varying sections of the skilled within that community. If everyone in Grand Master is using the same gun, then, uh, we might have a problem.

Also, getting to play against aim bots. Whoo.

Just had a thought: what does Halo do to eliminate or compensate for host advantage? In a competitive CoD setting, I could see many teams immediately dashboarding upon discovering that their team did not possess host.

It would be super cool if Treyarch resorted to dedicateds to resolve this problem, but let's be rational here.

[mw2baller]

Halo didn't have a problem with host advantage because weapons killed slow. The only thing that suffered from lag was the melee system. However they changed it so that if both players punch each other within 0.2 seconds or something, they both die.

However this didn't really make it better or worse. Instead of raging that I punched first and the guy still killed me, i'm pissed off because no matter how quick I punch, both of us die.

[Mousey]

^No damage bleed through fucks melees up way more, IMO

Honestly there's so many things that Halo reach did to casualize it. Didn't MLG or whatever axe halo from the system?

[moabmauler]

So it looks like treyarch is focuses on pleasing Touch Football CoD players while IW tries to please the casuals and bring in fresh meat.

Teryarch games:
Unstackable killstreaks
Harder to use sniper rifles
Wager matches
Harder unlocked and more rewarding pro perks
Skill weapons like ballistic knife, tomahawk and crossbow
Generally more health
Now this truskill ranking system

All things for skilled/ hard core cod players.

Now you look at IW games:

Deathstreaks
Support package
Random spawns and map design
OP Skilless weapons like tubes in mw2 and akimbo in mw3

[Mousey]

As long as they don't fuck up netcode and have some weapon diversity, looks good to me.

[wittyscorpion]

UPDATE:

08/13 teaser from David Vonderhaar's tweet:



"Top 2%. Or as I refer to it ... possibly better than @opticscumpii. Are you World or Pro? "

[moabmauler]

I want that symbol! Looks like I'm going to have to put my try hard pants on and only use OP weapons. Sorry shotguns!

[Mousey]

People who are between 2% and 5% should get a similar, but paler symbol with a huge ass 2 on it, just so everyone knows they just don't quite make the cut.

[wittyscorpion]

Just for completeness, here are the other emblems that appeared in his earlier tweets:



In the order of appearance: Left -> right, top -> bottom.

[LegitBeastin']

Aug 13, 2012 9:28:23 GMT -5 Mousey said:

As long as they don't fuck up netcode and have some weapon diversity, looks good to me.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

[Mousey]

Good point doggy.

[UrbaneVirtuoso]

With all the friendly randoms I've had the misfortune of dealing with, I dearly hope to God this is the real deal. :l

[wittyscorpion]

His tweets that went along with them:

Top right: "I have 2 Silver guns, one for each of ya."
Bottom left: "Gold, getting gold."
Bottom mid: "3 stars, not bad, not bad at all"
Bottom right: "< 18%"

A word of warning: at this point the skill-based ranking is just a guess. Don't put too much hope on it :-)

It will become clear in less than 24 hours: marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-II/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802415608c3 (Note: the timer is a big lie as it is subtracting your local time from UK 5pm, shame on whichever software developer that put it there)

[Mousey]

I'd pin myself as one of them gold thunderskulls.

[Megaqwerty]

Coincedentally, same number of leagues as Starcraft 2.

Also, I wonder if PC will have any implementation of this and, if so, how exactly that'll work out. For reference, PC has no matchmaking and only dedicated servers that to which users must manually connect.

[asasa]

Cool, so it looks like there will be 6 icons with sub ranks within? [Like SC2]

[wittyscorpion]

UPDATE:

This is now officially confirmed by the BO2 twitter:

Roy Brown ‏@valort: "@blackopsiinews will there be ranked and unranked playlists?"

‏@blackopsiinews: "@valort_ There are no unranked playlists but there is League Play, a new skill-based matchmaking system that sorts players into divisions."

I am sure that everybody is wondering how this could work out (how to measure skills, how to prevent cheating, etc, etc, etc). Look forward to seeing more details on this.

[wittyscorpion]

UPDATE:

In-depth article: www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3230713/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-esports-shoutcasting-league-play

Not much info on the key questions in my mind:

1) how would the "skill" be measured (W/L based hopefully?);

2) how to prevent cheating / boosting / intentional de-ranking etc.

3) how to address host, lag, network connections, etc to ensure fairness;

3) how would match making work for a party of players at different skill levels. (If I am in the "knife" league, can I still play with my superman friends who are in top 2%?)

4) how would it work across game modes? (A player could be great in TDM but not as great in Dom)

5) How would this integrate with the clans on Elite?

The main thing I got out of it is that there will be 7 leagues (not surprising as we have seen the 7 emblems :-) ).

[danoski666]

This will suck for me, as i propably wont be able to find alot(any) of people in my area with my skill level, and therefore be stuck with doo-doo connection. Yay.

[Killerpuffball]

In other words, whoever has the best connection wins?

[Mousey]

that is, unless they do dedi's like the guy said.

[iw5000]

'best connection', in terms of winning a game, rarely comes into play. Very few games that I can think of, ...they rarely if ever come down to just pure connection...in terms of winning the game. To many people fall back on that as an excuse.

[iw5000]

Aug 14, 2012 13:54:29 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

UPDATE:

In-depth article: www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3230713/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-esports-shoutcasting-league-play

Not much info on the 3 key questions in my mind:

1) how would the "skill" be measured (W/L based hopefully?);

2) how to prevent cheating / boosting / intentional de-ranking etc.

3) how to address host, lag, network connections, etc to ensure fairness;

3) how would match making work for a party of players at different skill levels. (If I am in the "knife" league, can I still play with my superman friends who are in top 2%?)

4) how would it work across game modes? (A player could be great in TDM but not as great in Dom)

The main thing I got out of it is that there will be 7 leagues (not surprising as we have seen the 7 emblems :-) ).

Witty...how does this affect our clan?

[Mousey]

Aug 14, 2012 14:17:31 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

'best connection', in terms of winning a game, rarely comes into play. Very few games that I can think of, ...they rarely if ever come down to just pure connection...in terms of winning the game. To many people fall back on that as an excuse.

They do when the latency is higher than the time it takes to kill someone.

WHOO WIFI

[wittyscorpion]

Aug 14, 2012 14:18:08 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Aug 14, 2012 13:54:29 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

UPDATE:

In-depth article: www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3230713/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-esports-shoutcasting-league-play

Not much info on the 3 key questions in my mind:

1) how would the "skill" be measured (W/L based hopefully?);

2) how to prevent cheating / boosting / intentional de-ranking etc.

3) how to address host, lag, network connections, etc to ensure fairness;

3) how would match making work for a party of players at different skill levels. (If I am in the "knife" league, can I still play with my superman friends who are in top 2%?)

4) how would it work across game modes? (A player could be great in TDM but not as great in Dom)

The main thing I got out of it is that there will be 7 leagues (not surprising as we have seen the 7 emblems :-) ).

Witty...how does this affect our clan?

That's a very good question.

For now there is not much information about how the league thing works, and absolutely zero information on how BO2 integrates with Elite.

I do hope that I can still play together with our highly skilled clan-mates even if I am placed in a much lower league (based on the clan leader board this would be most likely)

[iw5000]

What do you mean? Why wouldn't you play with us?

[Killerpuffball]

Aug 14, 2012 14:17:31 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

'best connection', in terms of winning a game, rarely comes into play. Very few games that I can think of, ...they rarely if ever come down to just pure connection...in terms of winning the game. To many people fall back on that as an excuse.

In a twitch shooter like CoD, even the slightest bits of lag will have negative effects on combat. I take it you don't live in the middle of nowhere in which the best speeds you can possibly pay for are 20Mbs/down.

[wittyscorpion]

Aug 14, 2012 14:24:13 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

What do you mean?

The matchmaking system is most likely TruSkill based, when a lower ranked player (say player A, e.g.: me) plays against a higher ranked player (say player B, e.g.: you), A has a lot to gain and a lot less to lose, while B has a lot less to gain and a lot more at stake. In other words, if A wins: A will gain a lot of "skill points" while B will lose a lot; If A loses: A will not lose much points while B will not gain much.

The system would try to match players with similar skill level. This works fine for random matchmaking. However, if a party has players with dramatically different skill level (e.g.: you and I), the matchmaking system would have a tougher time. Should it focus on finding players at your level, or mine? Either way somebody in the party would feel unhappy about the outcome. Advanced players may not want to play with lower ranked players because they are being "dragged down"

What I am worried about is that this system would force players to find "friends" with similar skill level.

Regarding clans: our clan probably will be segmented by leagues (i.e.: out of 100 clanmates, we will have 2 players in the top league, ~20 players in the second best, and most of rest spread through league 3 - 5. Very few at the bottom 2). Is this really a bad thing? Probably not. We will see.

[iw5000]

Aug 14, 2012 14:25:53 GMT -5 Killerpuffball said:

Aug 14, 2012 14:17:31 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

'best connection', in terms of winning a game, rarely comes into play. Very few games that I can think of, ...they rarely if ever come down to just pure connection...in terms of winning the game. To many people fall back on that as an excuse.

In a twitch shooter like CoD, even the slightest bits of lag will have negative effects on combat. I take it you don't live in the middle of nowhere in which the best speeds you can possibly pay for are 20Mbs/down.

On a 1 v 1 level....individual encounter,both guys face off on equal terms.... you are 100% right lag makes a difference at times.

But you put two squads up against each other, in an objective game like Domination.....not all the encounters come down to 1/10th of a second twitch battles. Most encounters are won or lost due to positioning regardless of lag. And furthermore, on a higher level, positioning, teammwork, communication....those things will decide the game 95 out of 100 times regardless of lag issues.