[PC] The Player Potential System

ambassadorkael

Take a look "under the hood" at a new system that will help match with other players in Season 13: Escalation.

Full details here:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10434053

sui2k

srsly, NO ONE plays PvP in this game (except some nerds) but the major playerbase playing pve content .. and here you are and bringin in a system for pvp oO .. wth is wrong with you, cryptic?

nandospc

Very nice. Hope to see more actions in PvP

dakotadahotness

"adjusted by a modifier" Any comment I would like to put here would either cause me to get a forum ban or incite a forum riot. Still waiting for a place to put my bags of Winter Even Ephoo, Epooh, however you spell it. And the endless list of other things that make for a poor player experience to be fixed.

tobiashirt

sui2k wrote: »

srsly, NO ONE plays PvP in this game (except some nerds) but the major playerbase playing pve content .. and here you are and bringin in a system for pvp oO .. wth is wrong with you, cryptic?

...and part of the reason for it is that there's no system like this in place now, as well as the numerous balance issues that have been let go unattended for years. Sure, I may not queue for PvP now, but I duel for fun or to help people test stuff. If all goes well, perhaps your sentiment will no longer apply in a few months. The only thing 'wrong' is that PvP issues haven't been addressed sooner.

sunfrancks

So it is based on gear and basic calculations.

Is the system smart enough to say, not put you against another player that has Lockbox, Lobi and Promotional ships and gear, if you don't have any?

Conversely, someone that doesn't have access to Fleet gear, should never be put against someone that does.

I know people who have all the specializations and the best gear in the game, but can barely compete with those that have none.

You see how complex this system will have to be to work, so not sure I can see this going well until it is smart enough.

roebotsixtyfive

As long as it stays out of Normal PvE and Private PvP, I couldn't care less about this, as I don't care about Comp PvE or Pub PvP.

It being in normal PvE would be a disaster, as it would make actually building your ship irrelevant, because as long as one member of your team did, you could roll in with a mk x white equipped (or whatever junk you've found) garbage scow having not spent a single Energy Credit and still be powerful. Such a system would also reduce income, as less people would use Dil (bought via Zen, because you need so much of it for upgrading) to upgrade items if they knew they would just be buffed up anyway.

Also seems to be very bad for 1v1 private PvP matches (which I very occasionally do with a friend), as those are primarily for seeing whose ship is better, not who has been buffed up the most.

Seems like a very niche update. At least there is a new FE (that's short for Featured Episode, not Featured Event (which drag way too long, and pretty much stop any other content coming for a month)) with it (can we keep them coming monthly from now on?) to keep us going.

doublecha

How to compare tactic, ingé or science captain ?
And science can have several gameplay.....

dalolorn

roebotsixtyfive wrote: »

As long as it stays out of Normal PvE and Private PvP, I couldn't care less about this, as I don't care about Comp PvE or Pub PvP.

It being in normal PvE would be a disaster, as it would make actually building your ship irrelevant, because as long as one member of your team did, you could roll in with a mk x white equipped (or whatever junk you've found) garbage scow having not spent a single Energy Credit and still be powerful. Such a system would also reduce income, as less people would use Dil (bought via Zen, because you need so much of it for upgrading) to upgrade items if they knew they would just be buffed up anyway.

Also seems to be very bad for 1v1 private PvP matches (which I very occasionally do with a friend), as those are primarily for seeing whose ship is better, not who has been buffed up the most.

You seem to have misunderstood things - people aren't getting buffed, the system makes an educated guess as to how strong they're going to be based on their gear and previous successes, and balances the teams around that strength. (For instance, if there are six idiots and four geniuses in the queue, each team will get three idiots and two geniuses.)

szim

Given how "the system" calculates your tier of rewards in battlezones I don't have much faith in this player potential calculation system either.

redvenge

Hmm

"Should you be matched against an exceptionally skilled player, you won’t be penalized severely if you come up short – and you’ll be rewarded if you come out on top!"

So... if only a handful of people que up... you are matched with whomever shows up...

I'm guessing this is going to be the norm a week after it goes live.

tobiashirt

sunfrancks wrote: »

So it is based on gear and basic calculations.

Is the system smart enough to say, not put you against another player that has Lockbox, Lobi and Promotional ships and gear, if you don't have any?

Conversely, someone that doesn't have access to Fleet gear, should never be put against someone that does.

I know people who have all the specializations and the best gear in the game, but can barely compete with those that have none.

You see how complex this system will have to be to work, so not sure I can see this going well until it is smart enough.

Smart or not, I don't think there should be any set prohibitions in the system about fleet gear or type of ship. So many good weapon types are non-fleet that that wouldn't help, and spire consoles should rank higher but not derail a match. Likewise, it's plausible that someone with a T6 fleet ship would have something comparable in power to lockbox/lobi, and with a good pilot would be more than a match. Again, lockbox/lobi/promo could hold more weight but not necessarily prevent a match.

I have the feeling that as the overall dataset gets larger, this'll get better...heck, we'll probably see some fiddling withe the ranking of particular items/specs/etc. as enough people play.

nccmax2

much oblige, i hope it is gonna be very succesful.

mustrumridcully0

If the competitive PvE queue is one of the few sources of Marks and Elite Marks of the new reputation, I think there will be bit more data for the system than usual. Unless people decide they don't want the newest powerful items.

akpa

Sounds like a mmr system like in many MMOs. One of the problems i think it will be the lack of players. Searching for players for pvp in a mostly pve comunity is time consuming already. Trying to get a match for your mmr(player potential) in the same pve comunity will be even more time consuming.
But who knows? Maybe this game will become p2w with great reward in pvp:)

evilmark444

roebotsixtyfive wrote: »

It being in normal PvE would be a disaster, as it would make actually building your ship irrelevant, because as long as one member of your team did, you could roll in with a mk x white equipped (or whatever junk you've found) garbage scow having not spent a single Energy Credit and still be powerful. Such a system would also reduce income, as less people would use Dil (bought via Zen, because you need so much of it for upgrading) to upgrade items if they knew they would just be buffed up anyway.

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in reference to a match making system. If this was applied to normal PvE queues all it would do is group people of similar performance together, likely making things more challenging for less geared players who would no longer be able to depend on carries from DPS monsters. It would not buff anyone as you seem to think. L2R.

Honestly though, I'd like to see this implemented for normal PvE, I am by no means a high DPSer and would love to have the challenge return to queues.

e1im

Should you be matched against an exceptionally skilled player, you won’t be penalized severely

Uh... ok. So you get pwned by a fellow player first, and then penalized by the system that pitched you against that player by mistake in the first place. At least the penalty is not severe. Thats good news.

batdood

Basically I'm reading this as skill based match-making with some gear stats thrown in. I've played other games with similar criteria and there's definitely ways around it. When it comes to any competitive games you play against people over the internet, you're always going to get those players who just want to wreck face and smash noobs. That's their fun. These same people have no interest in being competitive and they will find ways around it, no matter how "smart" the algorithm supposedly is. I don't expect it to be any different with STO.

I personally have absolutely no interest in PvP. None. But I realize there are some people who do so it's good that Cryptic is at least making an attempt at making PvP a better experience for those people. But if this match-making plan doesn't work out, I honestly don't see the PvP community getting any bigger as a result of the effort.

I'll just sit it out and see what kind of feedback ends up on the forums.

mustrumridcully0

e1im wrote: »

Should you be matched against an exceptionally skilled player, you won’t be penalized severely

Uh... ok. So you get pwned by a fellow player first, and then penalized by the system that pitched you against that player by mistake in the first place. At least the penalty is not severe. Thats good news.

I think the word choice is misleading. It doesn't matter to you personally what your potential score would be.

The only thing that matters is that the system knows what kind of enemies are likely to result in "fair" matches. If there are no players of your level around, you might fight tougher or weaker enemies, but then the system will adjust the score a bit less. The end goal is that your score is relatively stable, since it knows your relative strength to the other players.

trillbuffet

I am usually one to see how something will fail or be doomed. I haven't done pvp because it pretty much was the same exact thing for as long as I can remember. Although I am really hoping this succeeds because one of the reasons that the game had a drop off with DR and some of the other content is because it was always a rep/dungeon queue which eventually people got burned out and tired of doing.

One bit of news on the industry relating to this that may bring some light to shine on this is gw2 with its own problems it had similar with its xpac kinda like DR did here they are pulling out of the esports. If this brings back pvp to where there litterally was no pvp being its also to do with Star Trek it could be an option in the market for esports for Cryptic and PWE to jump on the vacuum where there is still potential money to be made and bring STO into a better position than it has ever been since launch.

So this has a lot of potential for the player base and bringing in old and new players back. As well if it does grow to being big enough to getting into esports as long as they can keep this kind of gameplay fresh and exciting to play it could potentially sweep that market.

I've always been into PvP no matter what game I'm playing it just needed this development push to get it going again. It may be a little too late for this suggestion but it would be pretty damn nice if the heavy bop made a come back as a T6 ship since it has been left behind and never even got a c-store version even of T5. It was like the go to ship a long time ago for the KDF in pvp and would be nice to see again

crypticarmsman

Wow - seriously - a 'Gear Score' system in STO for PvP? Hahahahaha!

The problem is - Players actually have to start PLAYING PvP again for this system to even work; and with the current balance state of powers (even with the coming 'balance pass' which IMO will make things MORE of a mess); I don't see that happening on either the PC or Console sides (or at least not enough to give the system enough data to work with: IE Some players may try PvP again once or twice; but that won't bee enough to give a valid rating.

I'm really amazed you guys are wasting time on this because in Cryptic's development history gpoing ALL THE WAY BACK TO "CITY OF HEROES" - if there's one thing you as a company have shown a complete INABILITY to do well, it's implementation of PvP in your MMOs.

iamynaught

Is this going to be purely a PvP only system, or is this going to be implemented into Competitive PvE as well?

If it's to be included into CPvE, then I can see there will be next to no activity in these types of queues after a short time, at least publicly, simply because it'll take forever to match 10 players closely enough for a match to start in a reasonable amount of time.

Some (perhaps even most?) public queues go hours without being run simply because 2-3 people join and they wait and wait and wait and finally get tired and leave the queue. And a lot of times I see 4 players queued and then a 5th comes along and when the countdown starts, 4 of the 5 queue but the 5th doesn't and the queue fails to load. Frustrating.

Another problem with this is if this new system ISN'T put into the new CPvE queues, you run the risk of teams of 'hardcore' DPS players dominating them simply to show off, and/or getting max rewards with little to no effort. Lesser geared or newer players will realize they can't make much if any progress and leave these queues.

I guess it'll just be a wait and see thing, but this system in addition to these new CPvE queues has me wondering just how it's going to play out.

sheldonlcooper

I have no interest in this new system.

ak255

ambassadorkael#6946 wrote: »

Up until now, the matchmaking system would be unaware of relative skill between players

Well no freakin DUH! And the fact you're doing it now because of PVP is even more insulting! I've been dealing with horrible random players in STFs for years now, but now that PVP is being revamped, NOW you're implementing a matchmaking system! Good to know where priorities lie.

gilion

Hopefully this system works and that they add to it as well as continue to balance the game. That being said, I find it funny how the blog post keeps referring to player "skill." When in reality, the people who win in PvP are the ones who spend more time/money building the best "mash space-bar build."

fruitvendor12

I'm curious to see how it turns out. The channels are already full of people planning to game the system.

soofismack

We have to be careful that this isn't looked at as a way to judge the haves and have nots, the rich players and the poor, we have enough of that in the world already

redvenge

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

If the competitive PvE queue is one of the few sources of Marks and Elite Marks of the new reputation, I think there will be bit more data for the system than usual. Unless people decide they don't want the newest powerful items.

Well, up until now, Cryptic has cultivated a playerbase that is "lukewarm" or even hostile towards PvP content. From my incredibly tiny sample size of 10 people, it seems the new reputation has to be a serious contender for "best in slot" to get some players to try the new ques. Even then, if the ques cannot provide a solid reward for time spent, they will die off like every other que that Cryptic has created. Because this is the playerbase Cryptic has created.

starcruiser

Why not make it OPTIONAL? Kinda ranked and unranked matches perhaps?

fftt

What I wouldn't mind seeing is 1v1, or even 2v2, PVP public queues (with a lower exiting condition so that you're not commited to playing for an hour or more). I've tried the open PVP in Kerrat every now then and what usually happens can best be described as being just plain outnumbered. And 5v5 is a similar situation where you will eventually end up being targeted by three or more players and the situation snowballs from there.

I'll give the new system a try, just like I pretty much give all new content a try, but I suspect it'll take more than just a player potential system for me to go further than that.