I have a hypothesis: because in small teams and 1v1, you're more likely to get into a hideously unbalanced game against experienced players than you are to get a fun game. Unbalanced games are just no fun, no matter whether you're the weaker or the stronger player. If you're the weaker player, you're just moving about and building stuff with no hope of actually making any progress in the game. If you're the stronger player - well, I wouldn't know, but if that were at all fun there wouldn't be so many cases of strong players "trolling" against noobs instead of playing the game. The ELO system is not a solution to this. Sure, if you win an unbalanced game, you get more ELO, but this doesn't make the game itself more fun. In fact, I'd say the ELO system makes unbalanced matches less fun overall, because it discourages strong players to impose a handicap on themselves to balance the game. If the strong player takes some handicap rule (like only using a certain fac) so that both players are equally likely to win, the ELO system doesn't know that, so the strong player is throwing away ELO to do this. I think that if we can find a way to make the game fun even when the players are not well-matched, there'll be a lot less crowding in the big teams room, and the benefit will be not just to the 1v1 and small-teams players, but also those big-team players who complain about getting noobs on their team.
+2 / -1
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Interesting idea with the handicapping. However, i have to object to part of your statement: quote:
If you're the weaker player, you're just moving about and building stuff with no hope of actually making any progress in the game. |
That is not true. Nothing progresses you more and faster in the game than getting your head smashed in in 1v1. Basically every "pro" player here has been through that, and so far i've never heard somebody say "good thing i learned ZK in teamgames". Not only do you have greater speed of iteration (games lasting 5-10 minutes instead of 20-50), you also immediately know why you lost (or people will tell you if you can't tell). Got trolled by a single raider? Got rushed? Got outecoed? All these things will at some point happen, and you will learn how to counter them (the easiest way for that is doing/trying those things yourself). However, it takes courage and endurance to make it. What it doesn't take is endless practice of your buildorder, your inject timings or your forcefields. You will progress fast through the skill curve, but it's nevertheless pretty steep for somebody with few RTS experience. Yes, having to lose many times in a row is not a great way to learn a game, but we don't have the playerbase to force matchmake new players in order to get new players to 1v1 against each other. Afaik, whenever two (or more) new players are in the 1v1 room, they are encouraged to play against each other and will receive feedback from the other players. Understandably, this doesn't happen very often. If you just throw new players against each other, they will not have much fun (if they're really new). They will sit forever on three mexes, will not attack, then build 5 glaives and run into enemy defenses. They don't really learn anything, because the feedback loop is so long (and it doesn't make ZK more interesting to them, i'd say). Coincidentally, the same thing happens in teamgames, only that the win chance there depends on if they follow "advice" from the better players on their team or if they build a ddm in the back of their base. But again, i find your idea interesting. It just sounds really hard to incorporate into the elo system. How do you determine which handycap is "fair"?
+3 / -0
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quote:
so far i've never heard somebody say "good thing i learned ZK in teamgames" |
Let me be the first to say it then. :) I started 1v1ing long after I had been playing CA/ZK teamgames, so I usually wasn't instantly pasted in 1v1, and if I was, I was able to see the reason for it.
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This post has been downvoted below -5 and collapsed, click here to expand
1v1 is WAAAAAY better for learning then 10v10. The 10v10 room should be removed and the nubs must be encouraged to try 1v1. In 1v1 you don't get flamed for being one of them filthy noobs and you will be better prepared for teams, should you ever want to play teams after learning 1v1 well.
I think being completely stomped in 1v1 while you are learning is not necessarily a bad thing, as it will show you where you went wrong and you can try to correct it next game.
+0 / -7
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I agree that 10v10 is bad for learning. Especially on a small map.
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quote:
I think being completely stomped in 1v1 while you are learning is not necessarily a bad thing, as it will show you where you went wrong and you can try to correct it next game. |
While this is true, he raises the valid concern that this is not the kind of fun players tend to enjoy (excluding DF players). Or more to the point, the game gets more "fair" when handicapping the better player, but it doesn't really change the learning curve. As in, if you manage to get one aspect of the game down, you actually have a chance to win because the better player will not necessarily beat you in some other aspect, making you lose.
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Experienced players can do a lot to encourage more 1v1. Often there's 10+ spectators in a single 1v1 room while there could be multiple ones going on at the same time. When a new player makes an account and all he sees is a 10v10 game and a 1v1 game he is likely to be drawn towards the 10v10 game. If there was a 10v10 game and 3 1v1 games going at the same time, it might for some people be different, because he would realise 1v1 is a popular game mode in this community. Also, if multiple 1v1 games at a time becomes common, there will be a wider selection of opponents to choose from for everybody (inluding newbies).
+2 / -0
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I learned all my skills in teams room o.O (and ffa)
+1 / -0
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My first Spring game ever was a 1v1 and it was traumatizing: my simbaes in corner got flooded by a wall of units. The guy did give me some tips and I even spectated some games afterwards, but the next few games I still got crushed. Sure, if I stayed in 1v1s I'd learn more, but teamgames offered a much smoother way to grasp stuff (note that those teamgames were what we currently know as "small" teams; 10v10 is a totally different game).
+2 / -0
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quote:
Often there's 10+ spectators in a single 1v1 room while there could be multiple ones going on at the same time. |
A lot of those people want to spec though. It is surprising how many people like spectating 1v1 but don't want to play a game.
+1 / -1
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i like clusterfuck lolsized games because of the awesom teamwork. 
+10 / -0
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@MauranKilom Perhaps I should have said "in the match" instead of "in the game". All the same, I think you saw that I'm not talking about learning, I'm talking about enjoying the game. If you can hide at the back and be completely useless for your team in a 10v10, while thinking that your hundred singus and the silencer that never gets used are really good, then you're not learning the game but you might be enjoying it. However valuable it is (that's another debate), getting stomped by a 2k ELO player is not fun. Everything you've said supports my point: new players learn by playing more experienced players, but they don't do that, they play 10v10. I think what    TheSponge said also supports my point: we need to find a way to encourage new players to play 1v1. Players come to 0K looking for a challenge - a game with depth, where you have to try hard to win - and in unbalanced 1v1 or small teams they find a game where they get stomped seemingly whatever they do. That's enough about why we need a handicapping system; onto how. The handicap would necessarily fit in with the ELO system: the ELO difference or ratio of the players would determine the scale of the handicap. If the aim is to make the win chance 50/50 (remember, the idea's not to make the game "fair", but to make it challenging for both players), then how the result feeds back into ELO would have to change: the ELO would have to be updated as if the players were of equal skill. This is kind of analogous to how handicaps work in chess or go: both deep strategic games which still manage to attract new players and have several competing ranking systems. Once the amount of handicap is determined, I can think of three ways it might apply in-game. The first would be that every unit's health would be scaled (I suggest reducing the health instead of increasing it, as increasing it would make e.g. ticks ineffective.) The second idea would be that metal points would give less metal for the stronger player, and energy generation would be reduced by the same factor. (Or every unit and building could be made more expensive: this is almost the same thing but the amount of buildpower required would increase too, which would be a nuisance.) Both the above options are continuous throughout the game, but I've a third idea that might be more interesting - but also more difficult. The weaker player could start the game with some mexes and solars already built near their starting point. This would effectively give them a head-start in the game, but the advantage would be reduced over time. The player would still need to raid etc. to capitalize on that early advantage. As I see it, doing it this way would avoid changing the economic balance of the game, and thus make it less likely that a new player would learn tactics that aren't effective in fair (unhandicapped) games. It would also fit better with the new player's main disadvantage: for the first few games, it takes twice as long to build anything because you have to mouse-over every button to find the unit/building you want. It also seems to me to have a neat similarity to the go practice of giving the weaker player some stones (i.e. extra moves before the stronger player starts).
+1 / -0
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A quick aside on this:- quote:
Afaik, whenever two (or more) new players are in the 1v1 room, they are encouraged to play against each other and will receive feedback from the other players.
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I've seen this happen. The "feedback" people get from the other players is, uh, not always constructive. More constructive than the "feedback" you see in the teams room, but even so. I wish every player who comments on a game they've spec'd would try to think of at least one nice or encouraging thing to say, even if it's only "you seem to be more familiar with the menus now" or "you reacted quickly when you started excessing metal". But I can't suggest an in-game way to encourage that behaviour. :-)
+1 / -0
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Why don't you request a poll to answer OP's question? We can speculate, but it does not answer this question... it answers "why do you believe noobs keep going to the clusterfuck teams room". Which may be quite different considering the bias shown toward large games... All in all, I'm not worried when I see "noobs" in the teams room. Things are different when I see a "10 vs chicken" game with 90% 1-3 chevron players...
+1 / -0
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Tarrington, your ideas are good ones. I think you're absolutely right that we should find ways to make 1v1 more attractive and fun for new players, and I think handicap matches would be a great way to do that. I think the best handicap system is to scale down the stronger player's metal and energy income. It's simple and elegant. Getting the scale factor right would take some trial and error. Over time, we could run a statistical analysis of the handicap game histories to narrow in on the right scaling factor that makes for an even game given a certain Elo difference. But we wouldn't need to be precise, or even correct, just to get started. Pick something that seems like it might be right and go with it, see how it works out. I would say that until we have a decent history with handicap games so that we know the scaling factor is at least somewhat reasonable, handicap games should not affect Elo. Maybe not ever, even once we do have some confidence in the scaling factor. That would provide an incentive for new players to play some games with the training wheels off, which is also a good thing.
+1 / -0
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Why do pros keep going to the clusterfuck teams room? Why do clusterfuck teams room exist?
+1 / -1
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Just close every room except 1v1 and see if it does any good to the community. I enjoy large games because I enjoy playing air... and the human factor is much more interesting in large games. I believe understanding the game at large is also a skill... and knowing who to help and who should be let to fail is interesting. Why are some people playing 6v6 volleyball when they could play 2v2 beach volley? Volleyball is a disease... blablabla... /s
+2 / -0
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Please discuss Tarrington's post, and not merely his (perhaps unfortunately chosen) subject line.
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  [V]sheep Don't take me the wrong way. I love that you can have 10v10 games (and more!) in Zero-K. I even enjoy playing them myself sometimes, and I'd play more often if I could rely on getting a map appropriate to the number of players. I started this topic because there seems to be a lot of consternation in the community: people outside the teams room say it's a shame that noobs think that's all there is to the game, and people inside the team room complain at having their team brought down by players who don't know how to play. It seems to me that if we can make small-team and 1v1 games more fun for new players, everyone will benefit.
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I dont see so much harrasment as calling noobs in teamgames as I do see harrasment against teamgameplayers being called noob by 1v1 players. Go figure.
+1 / -3
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