Blowouts/steamrolls

[SeaQuest]

It seems over the last few years they have been happening more and more. Either your team or the enemy team just folds before even half the time is up in the match.  Badly matched ships, balance, gimmicks, players themselves, etc. I am not really sure WG can fix this. SBMM ( Skill Based Matchmaker ) is not a good fix. Have seen SBMM in other games and in some cases it works and in others it just made it worse. Is this just unfixable? I am not sure nor do I have any ideas on how it could be made better here. I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

[Wolfswetpaws]

19 minutes ago, SeaQuest said:

I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

My idea is "don't lose sleep over it".
Wins happen.  Losses happen.  Whatever.  I still had a chance to earn in-game stuff and make progress on a grind or some in-game missions.
Games can be entertaining.
Good play, witty banter, a close-fought battle with formidable opponents.  We're here to play a game because the play is the fun part.
Each game can teach us lessons we can use to become a more worthy adversary and exhibit good sportsmanship.  🙂 
 

 

[3LUE]

I agree there really is no answer. It is a "Grim and Bear it" situation.

[DDG44_Vet]

Well said @Wolfswetpaws

[OldSchoolGaming_Youtube]

9 hours ago, SeaQuest said:

It seems over the last few years they have been happening more and more. Either your team or the enemy team just folds before even half the time is up in the match.  Badly matched ships, balance, gimmicks, players themselves, etc. I am not really sure WG can fix this. SBMM ( Skill Based Matchmaker ) is not a good fix. Have seen SBMM in other games and in some cases it works and in others it just made it worse. Is this just unfixable? I am not sure nor do I have any ideas on how it could be made better here. I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

Im not sure what exactly is the reason for this but since skill has no value in this game and nowhere do WG try and push players to actually get some skill, instead buy your way straight into T10 with premiums etc. You can play this game by just rolling the face over the keyboard and after enough times you pushed the "Battle" button you will been carried to T10 or Rank 1.

Even anew player that just grinds can today get to T10 without even grasping the basics of this game, is that good? (hence all those "I stumbled upon a cheater" threads in the old forum, then it just comes out the guy didn't know how smoke firing etc etc etc worked. You really should have gotten some skill or WR to be able to play T9-10.

I looks like 70 % of the players that play T10 has ZERO clue what even the game mode means, "what are those strange circles on the map", how many helps with the airship escort? How many help with caps? How many "just wanna play the game like they wanna play it...." (Yamato sitting on J-line entire game etc). And WG just keeps on creating more modes that most players are oblivious to .... or couldnt care less about .... frustrating the Fook out of players that do care (like me).

G-eaters and W-lickers are bad words to use describing player base but in every game I play the game seems to be filled with them.

That said, I Know im a competitive guy and I love to win, hence I make sure to get some skill doing things, but many players here just seem to wanna sail around in ships doing nothing. Im just wondering the level of enjoyment those players gett out of a game like this? 

But going by this it IS strange that 6 min steamrolls happens so often. Its like MM puts all those that has some understanding of this game on one side and the guys just wanna "get along" on the other side, almost every game. 

Edited November 23, 2023 by OldSchoolGaming_Youtube

[Asym]

1 hour ago, OldSchoolGaming_Youtube said:

Im not sure what exactly is the reason for this but since skill has no value in this game and nowhere do WG try and push players to actually get some skill, instead buy your way straight into T10 with premiums etc. 

...

But going by this it IS strange that 6 min steamrolls happens so often. Its like MM puts all those that has some understanding of this game on one side and the guys just wanna "get along" on the other side, almost every game. 

They happen because there are more veteran players than new players !  We are a veteran dense population (a left skewed distribution) that eats its young....

Stomps and a symptom of a serious "skill disparity" in any game.  Since, we don't really have a "skill metric that doesn't involve RNG", we imploded a lot faster than other games with the same "age and growth" challenges...

If I were to guess, using what previous games have experienced and they imploded, "Skill Densities" are the root cause.  If you don't have 69% of your game population as "average players", a non-skill based MM will chose from a Left Skewed distribution and that, is where Stomps come from.......IMO.  As experienced in several older games played of the same combat-esk genres...

[OldSchoolGaming_Youtube]

32 minutes ago, Asym said:

They happen because there are more veteran players than new players !  We are a veteran dense population (a left skewed distribution) that eats its young....

Stomps and a symptom of a serious "skill disparity" in any game.  Since, we don't really have a "skill metric that doesn't involve RNG", we imploded a lot faster than other games with the same "age and growth" challenges...

If I were to guess, using what previous games have experienced and they imploded, "Skill Densities" are the root cause.  If you don't have 69% of your game population as "average players", a non-skill based MM will chose from a Left Skewed distribution and that, is where Stomps come from.......IMO.  As experienced in several older games played of the same combat-esk genres...

I didn't really get the last part, but are you saying that when having a not skilled based MM the MM will fill up the teams horrible bad/skewed?

 

My take is the basic problem with this game is that it requires no skill to get elevated up the tiers. We have many players at T10 today that have no clue how basic mechanics work, why some torps curve these days, why they get spotted sometimes, what they can do in smokes etc etc.

If the game actually forced players to get better to evolve this would be a great and fun game, but there is no money in that for WG, and they probably lose a lot of "I just wanna see some fishes..." players.

This is also the reason why I haven't touched Ranked in 6 years. Ranked is supposed to be the best players who wants to compete in a more challenging mode, when in reality its a worse sheeit show then Randoms because its the same low skilled players but now they make out a bigger percentage of youre team.

Thats why you have 1 step upwards 3 steps down effect. But even these players reach Gold league if they press "Battle" enough times ..... and thats a good thing for WG Statistics/holy spreadsheets (they can show to investors) also a good reason why we get free stuff just by logging in every day ("hey, look how many players log into our game each day..:"), but how many of them play?

Edited November 23, 2023 by OldSchoolGaming_Youtube

[Helstrem]

Snowball effect.  Blowouts are still a regular feature in battles between teams of highly skilled players.  The idea that a skill based matchmaker would significantly impact the number of blowouts is laughable.  A skill based match maker has no mechanism to affect the dominant causes of blowouts.

[ArIskandir]

13 hours ago, SeaQuest said:

Is this just unfixable? I am not sure nor do I have any ideas on how it could be made better here. I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

it is the natural consequence of having an increasingly asymmetric environment, the results spread will be more loaded to the extremes than in a more symmetrical scenario. There's a greater number of combinations that result in blowout situations. 

There's no "fix" no talk about because it is a natural consequence of game development and skill disparity between veterans of many years and new players. But also it shouldn't be a problem if you as a player adjust your expectations, you must understand blowouts will happen beyond your agency and don't get sour about it. Focus on your own personal performance and you'll only have yourself to blame, forget about what the other guys do or not do... thats up to them and you can't change that. Hence the old mantra of "Carry Harder". 

[Asym]

2 hours ago, OldSchoolGaming_Youtube said:

I didn't really get the last part, but are you saying that when having a not skilled based MM the MM will fill up the teams horrible bad/skewed?

 

My take is the basic problem with this game is that it requires no skill to get elevated up the tiers. We have many players at T10 today that have no clue how basic mechanics work, why some torps curve these days, why they get spotted sometimes, what they can do in smokes etc etc.

If the game actually forced players to get better to evolve this would be a great and fun game, but there is no money in that for WG, and they probably lose a lot of "I just wanna see some fishes..." players.

This is also the reason why I haven't touched Ranked in 6 years. Ranked is supposed to be the best players who wants to compete in a more challenging mode, when in reality its a worse sheeit show then Randoms because its the same low skilled players but now they make out a bigger percentage of youre team.

Thats why you have 1 step upwards 3 steps down effect. But even these players reach Gold league if they press "Battle" enough times ..... and thats a good thing for WG Statistics/holy spreadsheets (they can show to investors) also a good reason why we get free stuff just by logging in every day ("hey, look how many players log into our game each day..:"), but how many of them play?

I'm not sure if this is what you really didn't get, so I'll guess and try to fill in as best I can.

Non-skilled MM's rely on a "Normal or Standard Distribution" of players to staff each match:

You can see the 69%   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ that are average players.   Why is it needed, because if the majority of players in a game are "average", the MM has 69% of the game population to draw on for each team.  

Now, as a mature game, with a non-skill based MM, where there are more Veteran players than average and very, very few new players, the same curve looks like this:

Which shows, that there are very few new or average players in each match...  And that fact, leads to cascading error events......which, we call Stomps....  I use this graph as an example.   I believe that the slope is less severe in our game's case...  But, the "bell curve" symmetry is gone and the MM then has to form teams from a veteran heavy populations and that, in and of itself, doesn't work well most times....

Hope this helps

[Arcus_Aesopi]

Seal clubbing has been a thing for a long time…

The lower the population of available players gets, the worse the problem will get…

Asymmetric co-op is a really good solution IMHO for both allowing for more fun and “training” new players as it is probably a better stepping stone into randoms… one would still get “punished” for high risk gameplay but with more of a chance to survive and learn…

After 1000 asymmetric wins, the reward is access to randoms?  Something like that would help…

WG isn’t desperate enough to actually make the gaming experience better… still too many unbalancing shiny things to sell.

Hope it gets better!

[ArIskandir]

2 hours ago, OldSchoolGaming_Youtube said:

If the game actually forced players to get better to evolve this would be a great and fun game, but there is no money in that for WG, and they probably lose a lot of "I just wanna see some fishes..." players.

Ommitting the need to accomodate all types of players, competitve or casual (can't be picky about your clients...), there are very significant challenges in this age preventing new players to "git gud"...

• The amount of knowledge needed to be "effective" has been increasing to the point many veterans find it hard to keep up (Subs as example), imagine the situation if you are starting from scratch.
• The resource disparity has also increased, as a new player you will start competing against fully upgraded 21 Cpts with fully upgraded ships, the "end game" ceiling lies higher than before. 
• The environment itself is more asymmetric, challenging and difficult to master than it was before, the reasons of your demisal may not be as apparent as they were before... it is easier to see the cause-effect of you getting deleted by showing broadside than getting deleted by shotgun attack because you were simply out of position by 2 kms. 
• All this leads to a much harder and frustrating learning process, "getting gud" now requieres more investment than before, so fewer player will take up the challenge. 

There's a reason why experienced gamers usually don't jump into "old games" as their "main" title, you pick them early on and then ride the wave as the game develops... getting started as a competitive player in a year's old game is a daunting task... as an example, if you have no previous experience, try to make a fresh start on the PvP scene of EVE... 

 

3 hours ago, OldSchoolGaming_Youtube said:

This is also the reason why I haven't touched Ranked in 6 years. Ranked is supposed to be the best players who wants to compete in a more challenging mode,

Not really. Ranked is where you go to play solo in a more even environment. If you play solo these days in Randoms, odds are you will have to face against many "stomp" Divs of competitive/veteran players... Randoms are already a mess, when you factor in triple Divs, things escalate quickly into deep BS territory. So Ranked fill the niche for a more "fair" environment for Solo play. 

[Helstrem]

2 hours ago, Asym said:

I'm not sure if this is what you really didn't get, so I'll guess and try to fill in as best I can.

Non-skilled MM's rely on a "Normal or Standard Distribution" of players to staff each match:

You can see the 69%   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ that are average players.   Why is it needed, because if the majority of players in a game are "average", the MM has 69% of the game population to draw on for each team.  

Now, as a mature game, with a non-skill based MM, where there are more Veteran players than average and very, very few new players, the same curve looks like this:

Which shows, that there are very few new or average players in each match...  And that fact, leads to cascading error events......which, we call Stomps....  I use this graph as an example.   I believe that the slope is less severe in our game's case...  But, the "bell curve" symmetry is gone and the MM then has to form teams from a veteran heavy populations and that, in and of itself, doesn't work well most times....

Hope this helps

This is 99% orthogonal to the cause of blowouts.  All those other games you mention have mechanisms to substantially neuter the snowball effect.  WoWS does not, the anti-snowball mechanisms in WoWS are very weak, and none of the mechanisms used by other games appeal to the type of game WoWS is.  The most common anti-snowball mechanism is simply respawns upon death.  Other ideas are buffing the units of the outnumbered side, the greater the numbers disparity the greater the buffs or, conversely, nerfing the side with numbers or basing the number of points needed for a win on the relative numbers of the teams.  None of these feel right for WoWS.

The only idea I have that might fit WoWS, or WoT for that matter, is a reinforcement mechanism.  Something like setting up queue when you click to go into battle, perhaps one ship of each type, perhaps without restriction.  For example you could be doing a Tier VII battle and pick a slow BB such as Colorado, California or West Virginia '44 as your first ship, but knowing you'll need to get back in battle ASAP if you lose your first ship perhaps Hood and Gneisenau are your second and third ships.  Doing this makes it harder for a team to run out of ships before one side wins on points, making the matches last longer but also minimizing the times two ships are fighting ten ships.  The way the in game economics work for this would need to be hashed out as well.

[Wolfswetpaws]

2 hours ago, Helstrem said:

This is 99% orthogonal to the cause of blowouts.  All those other games you mention have mechanisms to substantially neuter the snowball effect.  WoWS does not, the anti-snowball mechanisms in WoWS are very weak, and none of the mechanisms used by other games appeal to the type of game WoWS is.  The most common anti-snowball mechanism is simply respawns upon death.  Other ideas are buffing the units of the outnumbered side, the greater the numbers disparity the greater the buffs or, conversely, nerfing the side with numbers or basing the number of points needed for a win on the relative numbers of the teams.  None of these feel right for WoWS.

The only idea I have that might fit WoWS, or WoT for that matter, is a reinforcement mechanism.  Something like setting up queue when you click to go into battle, perhaps one ship of each type, perhaps without restriction.  For example you could be doing a Tier VII battle and pick a slow BB such as Colorado, California or West Virginia '44 as your first ship, but knowing you'll need to get back in battle ASAP if you lose your first ship perhaps Hood and Gneisenau are your second and third ships.  Doing this makes it harder for a team to run out of ships before one side wins on points, making the matches last longer but also minimizing the times two ships are fighting ten ships.  The way the in game economics work for this would need to be hashed out as well.

There was a space-themed temporary game mode (years ago) that had re-spawning as a feature of the mode.
Haven't seen it, since, though.

[SoshiSone]

22 hours ago, SeaQuest said:

I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

 

[SleepySalmon]

"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."

Emphasis on the bolded part.

Edited November 24, 2023 by SleepySalmon

[Wolfswetpaws]

21 minutes ago, SleepySalmon said:

"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."

Emphasis on the bolded part.

“All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us…they can’t get away this time”
– Lewis B. Chesty Puller, USMC
https://www.military-quotes.com/chesty-puller.htm
 

[Unlooky]

On 11/22/2023 at 10:54 PM, SeaQuest said:

It seems over the last few years they have been happening more and more. Either your team or the enemy team just folds before even half the time is up in the match.  Badly matched ships, balance, gimmicks, players themselves, etc. I am not really sure WG can fix this. SBMM ( Skill Based Matchmaker ) is not a good fix. Have seen SBMM in other games and in some cases it works and in others it just made it worse. Is this just unfixable? I am not sure nor do I have any ideas on how it could be made better here. I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

I think the problem at it's core lies within the audience itself, similarly to WoT. On one hand, you have the casual old guys interested for the history or perhaps some connection to the naval services. On the other hand you have younger people who play for the more competitive side, coming from more competitive games and bringing their grindset. Generally the aforementioned group doesn't care nearly as much at "getting gud" so long as they get to sail around whatever ship of their choice and perform to a decent level. The second will treat the game as just that, a game to become better in.

In my opinion these steamrolls are caused by too many individuals of either group on a single team, and there isn't really an easy solution since this is inherently an issue caused by the conjoining of the two groups. Unless WG gave us a satisfactory Ranked mode, this problem is likely to persist until the death of the game. 

[3LUE]

The fact WG has now given players the option to turn off chat does not help matters much. It is almost like many of the players, play this game like it is a single player game not multi.

[SeaQuest]

On 11/23/2023 at 1:37 PM, ArIskandir said:

Ommitting the need to accomodate all types of players, competitve or casual (can't be picky about your clients...), there are very significant challenges in this age preventing new players to "git gud"...

• The amount of knowledge needed to be "effective" has been increasing to the point many veterans find it hard to keep up (Subs as example), imagine the situation if you are starting from scratch.
• The resource disparity has also increased, as a new player you will start competing against fully upgraded 21 Cpts with fully upgraded ships, the "end game" ceiling lies higher than before. 
• The environment itself is more asymmetric, challenging and difficult to master than it was before, the reasons of your demisal may not be as apparent as they were before... it is easier to see the cause-effect of you getting deleted by showing broadside than getting deleted by shotgun attack because you were simply out of position by 2 kms. 
• All this leads to a much harder and frustrating learning process, "getting gud" now requieres more investment than before, so fewer player will take up the challenge. 

There's a reason why experienced gamers usually don't jump into "old games" as their "main" title, you pick them early on and then ride the wave as the game develops... getting started as a competitive player in a year's old game is a daunting task... as an example, if you have no previous experience, try to make a fresh start on the PvP scene of EVE... 

 

Not really. Ranked is where you go to play solo in a more even environment. If you play solo these days in Randoms, odds are you will have to face against many "stomp" Divs of competitive/veteran players... Randoms are already a mess, when you factor in triple Divs, things escalate quickly into deep BS territory. So Ranked fill the niche for a more "fair" environment for Solo play. 

EVE is my main game. Love it and you are correct new players get lost in all the info needed to play. I have been playing EVE from day one. I can't even think how tough that game would be starting fresh today. 

[BOBTHEBALL]

On 11/22/2023 at 10:54 PM, SeaQuest said:

It seems over the last few years they have been happening more and more. Either your team or the enemy team just folds before even half the time is up in the match.  Badly matched ships, balance, gimmicks, players themselves, etc. I am not really sure WG can fix this. SBMM ( Skill Based Matchmaker ) is not a good fix. Have seen SBMM in other games and in some cases it works and in others it just made it worse. Is this just unfixable? I am not sure nor do I have any ideas on how it could be made better here. I was just wondering if any of you have any ideas.

It's not something WG can really fix, it's the players. The players have gotten so incredibly bad and others have gotten so good that obviously one team will get bent over and used like a cheap toy in December. The good players will farm and kill the bad ones and will finish the game extremely quick.

[SeaQuest]

1 minute ago, BOBTHEBALL said:

It's not something WG can really fix, it's the players. The players have gotten so incredibly bad and others have gotten so good that obviously one team will get bent over and used like a cheap toy in December. The good players will farm and kill the bad ones and will finish the game extremely quick.

I have to agree, but it does not make the game fun. I like a good close game like I get in EVE. Bad players just don't last over there. 

[BOBTHEBALL]

Just now, SeaQuest said:

I have to agree, but it does not make the game fun. I like a good close game like I get in EVE. Bad players just don't last over there. 

Eh I enjoy it, mainly because I'm the guy bending others over and clapping them. It can get frustrating though especially when I'm having a bad time.

[Type_93]

My favorite is when the guy in the German BB dies first cuz “brawling” and starts acting like admiral armchair with a 42% WR telling the team what they should do. Some of my favorite players.