Flimsy Lunch Tray Comments on Lopsided Games

[yss_turtleship]

FlimsyLunchTray comments on the topic of lopsided games as we have discussed here. Interestingly enough he also mentions the closing of the old forums and the departure of CCs, @LittleWhiteMouse,  @Chobittsu  , et al.
 

 

[Itwastuesday]

So his long, rambly point : the good players have left. Yes, I tend to agree.

[Wolfswetpaws]

41 minutes ago, yss_turtleship said:

FlimsyLunchTray comments on the topic of lopsided games as we have discussed here. Interestingly enough he also mentions the closing of the old forums and the departure of CCs, @LittleWhiteMouse,  @Chobittsu  , et al.
 

 

Well, that's  15 minutes and 40 seconds of my life that I can't get back.
I feel that was a waste of my time.
Boring island-camper regurgitates and re-hashes years old sentiments expressed by others and parroted by himself.
🤮

[Asym]

8 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

So his long, rambly point : the good players have left. Yes, I tend to agree.

Or, we lost almost all of the Average Players....  You know, those 69% of the players that the MM needs to create "balanced matches..."  A bell curve that was, for many years, till Update 8.0 simply drove hundreds of PVP players off.  Subs has done an even better job driving "average players" away....

So, our population might, if I were guessing, look something like this example:

        New Players                                                  Average                                Veteran Players

There is no "symmetry of skill" and therefore, no symmetry of success....  Extremely good veterans farming extremely new seals = STOMP.   Seals trying to work together not having any experience = cascading error losses....  BTW, Stomps are a symptom of game populations that are not "balanced"....  Since, we don't have a skill based MM, WYSIWYG......  Stomps are the new norm....

Now, I could be wrong and this is my "opinion" based of a few decades of playing, working on, and evaluation military-esk games & SIMs....  Mature games, such as WoWs, simply can't afford new content creation in the small Niche market(s) it resides...  About year 6, "something anomalous" finds it way into the game and POOF.......exodus of players (think Update 8.0 & Subs as examples)....  Stalled populations....  More veterans than baby seals....  Stomps become the norm and the game implodes even further and secures a fixed population of older players whom refuse to leave.....  

Again, just a hunch on my part.

 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

Plus, the very nature of the game makes Lanchester's Law more determinant than other game types...

Or, to put it more simply, stomps are the natural order of games like this...and WGs business strategy with respect to player retention and match making has intentionally ENCOURAGED the likelihood of stomps being experienced.

The real tragedy is that WG doesn't care about stomps. They have very little care about game quality at all.

[Itwastuesday]

5 minutes ago, Asym said:

Or, we lost almost all of the Average Players....  You know, those 69% of the players that the MM needs to create "balanced matches..."  A bell curve that was, for many years, till Update 8.0 simply drove hundreds of PVP players off.  Subs has done an even better job driving "average players" away....

This also sounds plausible. Perhaps even more probable? The leaving of the relatively few great wouldn't impact general match quality as much as the leaving of the most normal players.

[Asym]

5 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

Plus, the very nature of the game makes Lanchester's Law more determinant than other game types...

Or, to put it more simply, stomps are the natural order of games like this...and WGs business strategy with respect to player retention and match making has intentionally ENCOURAGED the likelihood of stomps being experienced.

The real tragedy is that WG doesn't care about stomps. They have very little care about game quality at all.

Ah, the prediction of outcomes based on comparative calculations of Combat Mass......time.   And, guess where the concept of "regulated" munitions and weapons comes from...........^^^^.   In the US, "a well regulated militia....." actually is saying "a combat force of combatants all using exactly the same weapons and ammunition".... 

That, a well regulate force, is crucial to linear, formation warfare - in that, Commanders could actually calculate the "throw weight" of the enemy forces....  And, when you add in rating the skills of the enemy, a Commander's staff would "crunch the numbers" and adapt to that reality.  Now, technology changed everything....

Asymmetry is really hard to model.....  Especially, with American forces (whom, simply don't conform to norms the rest of the world accepts....) 

Here are three Historic vignettes from my days at CGSC.

1.     “In all of my discussions, planning and negotiations with the Americans, they always produce a list of 'things to do.’  It is not in this list that my concerns, frustration and feelings of impending doom grow; it is in the fact that Americans feel no moral obligation to follow that list and it's the 11th item of a 10 item list that keeps me sleepless...."

2.       “The first rule of fighting Americans in the Open is, don’t.  Americans have a proclivity to separate into small units anyway which makes dealing with them problematic at best…  The second rule is that American small units follow broad and general guidance, which, I might warn, isn’t specific enough to determine where they might go and what they might do…  But, rest assured, if you engage one small unit with a superior force, you can bet that there are several others just looking for some reason to do something unprecedented or insanely clever, upsetting any logical or rationale plan you may have…  Oh, lest I forget, once Americans small units start “wandering around,” they are really hunting you, even if they don’t seem that way….”

1.      “Never get between the Americans and their sense of right.  Never push American soldiers to the point where they fragment into small units.  To do so evokes the worst possible of scenarios.  Never assume you can attrite smaller units.  Never assume Americans will quit if you bypass them and never assume they’ll deal with you when all else has failed them…  For in despair, Americans become more dangerous than you might think and if they decide to die in place, you are in their plans….”

 

[Wolfswetpaws]

40 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

Plus, the very nature of the game makes Lanchester's Law more determinant than other game types...

Or, to put it more simply, stomps are the natural order of games like this...and WGs business strategy with respect to player retention and match making has intentionally ENCOURAGED the likelihood of stomps being experienced.

The real tragedy is that WG doesn't care about stomps. They have very little care about game quality at all.

The youtube-er, FlimsyLunchTray complained about "stomps".
Other people complain about "stomps".  And "steamrolls" and "insert preferred expressive term here".  Whatever.  🙂 

I was thinking while watching the video that I've said in the past, "Co-op players sink more ships per minute than most random players".
The whole <bleep>-ing objective of the battle is to sink the other team's ships and/or satisfy the battle mission criteria.  Whichever comes first, eh?

We're supposed to "get gud" enough to out-play "the other guy(s)".
And in the process, we may sink enough ships to create an advantage for our team. 
And if our team is decent, they'll be able to run with (or sail with?) that advantage and use it to sink red-team ships or at least force them to retreat.

This notion of a long drawn-out see-sawing battle of nail-biting drama and entertaining hijinks and paid-actors (like the submarine that practically served itself up to be sunk in the video) being the ideal battle is, in some ways, ludricrous (in my opinion).
That kind of drama can be found in soap-operas and swashbuckling adventure stories.

As entertaining as the hijinks and shennanigans may be, they're also "unprofessional", eh?
Because a team of "pros" should be able to "steamroll" a team of "average joes" (except in a dodgeball movie?), eh?  🙂 

Why make a battle last longer than necessary?
Seriously?  Why?
What are we waiting for?  Just sink 'em and be done with it.  🙂 
 

Edited April 22 by Wolfswetpaws

[Unlooky]

8 minutes ago, Asym said:

Or, we lost almost all of the Average Players....  You know, those 69% of the players that the MM needs to create "balanced matches..."  A bell curve that was, for many years, till Update 8.0 simply drove hundreds of PVP players off.  Subs has done an even better job driving "average players" away....

So, our population might, if I were guessing, look something like this example:

        New Players                                                  Average                                Veteran Players

There is no "symmetry of skill" and therefore, no symmetry of success....  Extremely good veterans farming extremely new seals = STOMP.   Seals trying to work together not having any experience = cascading error losses....  BTW, Stomps are a symptom of game populations that are not "balanced"....  Since, we don't have a skill based MM, WYSIWYG......  Stomps are the new norm....

Now, I could be wrong and this is my "opinion" based of a few decades of playing, working on, and evaluation military-esk games & SIMs....  Mature games, such as WoWs, simply can't afford new content creation in the small Niche market(s) it resides...  About year 6, "something anomalous" finds it way into the game and POOF.......exodus of players (think Update 8.0 & Subs as examples)....  Stalled populations....  More veterans than baby seals....  Stomps become the norm and the game implodes even further and secures a fixed population of older players whom refuse to leave.....  

Again, just a hunch on my part.

 

I think this analysis is flawed on the idea that Veteran players are automatically better, or even good. I can't tell you how many profiles I've seen with Potato Alert that have upwards of twenty thousand battles and a 40% winrate. From what I've seen, if you have a ridiculous number of battles, it's actually more likely that you suck at the game (sort by battles on the NA leaderboard if you don't believe me.) The first actually good player on that list (that is, very good winrate and above Tier 8 as their average tier) was in 16th place. 

Even if the population consisted of mostly skilled players, that should mean that games are relatively balanced, and the only time steamrolls occur are when there are an uneven amount of new/below average players on one team. Since matchmaker does not take into account player skill, this is somewhat inevitable due to the random nature of the game. Honestly I feel like World of Tanks has the steamroll issue much worse, and they have a significantly larger player population than us, with presumably a larger proportion of newer players. 

Regardless, SBMM wouldn't help, at least for random battles. It's a pretty laid back, casual mode. Look at how many other games have implemented SBMM and how much their communities despise it. Now, if WG wanted to rework Ranked into an actual competitive mode, instead of the current farce, then this discussion would be suited for that, but unfortunately they seem satisfied with the ranked system as is, where any moron can spam their way into Gold rank 1. 

 

 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

34 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

The youtube-er, FlimsyLunchTray complained about "stomps".
Other people complain about "stomps".  And "steamrolls" and "insert preferred expressive term here".  Whatever.  🙂 

I was thinking while watching the video that I've said in the past, "Co-op players sink more ships per minute than most random players".
The whole <bleep>-ing objective of the battle is to sink the other team's ships and/or satisfy the battle mission criteria.  Whichever comes first, eh?

We're supposed to "get gud" enough to out-play "the other guy(s)".
And in the process, we may sink enough ships to create an advantage for our team. 
And if our team is decent, they'll be able to run with (or sail with?) that advantage and use it to sink red-team ships or at least force them to retreat.

This notion of a long drawn-out see-sawing battle of nail-biting drama and entertaining hijinks and paid-actors (like the submarine that practically served itself up to be sunk in the video) being the ideal battle is, in some ways, ludricrous (in my opinion).
That kind of drama can be found in soap-operas and swashbuckling adventure stories.

As entertaining as the hijinks and shennanigans may be, they're also "unprofessional", eh?
Because a team of "pros" should be able to "steamroll" a team of "average joes" (except in a dodgeball movie?), eh?  🙂 

Why make a battle last longer than necessary?
Seriously?  Why?
What are we waiting for?  Just sink 'em and be done with it.  🙂 
 

You need to make sure your actions contribute to a friendly stomp...that is what people are waiting for.

Blindly sailing forward and applying maximum firepower works in co-op because the bots are as dumb as Generals Gage and Howe when dealing with the prospect of fortifications on Breeds Hill.

Human players are a bit more savvy than the bots.

Blindly sailing forward against humans gets you sunk for proportionally little gain...and can often start the stomp against your team.

I do agree that a LOT of battleship players could learn to understand how to stay alive when not behind an island...

...but driving your ship under the guns of half the enemy fleet and dying quickly is not good play or skillful.

[Unlooky]

Just now, Wolfswetpaws said:

This notion of a long drawn-out see-sawing battle of nail-biting drama and entertaining hijinks and paid-actors (like the submarine that practically served itself up to be sunk in the video) being the ideal battle is, in some ways, ludricrous (in my opinion).

People like these battles because they're the most interesting. Nobody wants to queue into a game where the outcome is foretold because your team has two unicum triple divisions, and you get 0 damage as a result. The more drawn out and tense matches are more interesting because singular plays can change the tide of battle. If I just wanted to win against lobotomized opponents every game I would either play co op or tier 6. 

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 minute ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

You need to make sure your actions contribute to a friendly stomp...that is what people are waiting for.

Blindly sailing forward and applying maximum firepower works in co-op because the bots are as dumb as Generals Gage and Howe when dealing with the prospect of fortifications on Breeds Hill.

Human players are a bit more savvy than the bots.

Blindly sailing forward against humans gets you sunk for proportionally little gain...and can often start the stomp against your team.

I do agree that a LOT of battleship players could learn to understand how to stay alive when not behind an island...

...but driving your ship under the guns of half the enemy fleet and dying quickly is not good play or skillful.

I play all available ship types in all available game modes.

I'm not advocating for players to throw their ships away. 
I'm advocating for players to learn to play well and play together and do so with enough competence to win battles slightly more than 50% of the time.  😉 

[Wolfswetpaws]

5 minutes ago, Unlooky said:

People like these battles because they're the most interesting. Nobody wants to queue into a game where the outcome is foretold because your team has two unicum triple divisions, and you get 0 damage as a result. The more drawn out and tense matches are more interesting because singular plays can change the tide of battle. If I just wanted to win against lobotomized opponents every game I would either play co op or tier 6. 

Yet in your earlier post, you lament about players with 40% win-rates.
Which is worse?  A programmed 'Bot?  Or a human exhibiting poor play?

At least the 'Bots play to the objectives.  🙂 

Edited to add:  https://www.devstrike.net/topic/3651-flimsy-lunch-tray-comments-on-lopsided-games/?do=findComment&comment=48700

 

Edited April 22 by Wolfswetpaws

[Unlooky]

Just now, Wolfswetpaws said:

Yet in your earlier post, you lament about players with 40% win-rates.
Which is worse?  A programmed 'Bot?  Or a human exhibiting poor play?

At least the 'Bots play to the objectives.  🙂 

I don't see how any of my posts are contradictory. You can dislike 40% profiles and also want for more intense battles. The point isn't to stack all the best players on one team so there is no doubt who the winner will be, the point is to have a sufficient distribution of skill so there is at least a chance for both teams to win throughout the match. 

 

Also, playing the objective IS NOT necessarily good play. The GK who goes straight into the cap 4 minutes in and gets farmed is technically playing the objective. The DD who keeps trying to contest the cap on an obviously outnumbered flank is playing the objective, yet playing poorly. 

Edited April 22 by Unlooky

[Rollingonit]

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

 re-hashes years old sentiments expressed by others and parroted by himself.

I watched it out of curiosity to see if anything new was presented. Most experienced players agree with the view. But yah it is rehashed things weve been saying for awhile now.

[desmo_2]

What is the accepted definition of a "stomp"?  More than half of the winning team survive?  Two thirds?
 

I ask because I had seen this thread earlier, and then in a recent game one of my team mates complained in-game that it was "another slaughter".  The red team had 4 ships left.  They did take the last of three caps later in the game, but I argued that it wasn't a steam roll.  I got a predictable response to that..."&%^$ you, WG fanboi!", or something very similar.

So what is the definition?

[clammboy]

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

The youtube-er, FlimsyLunchTray complained about "stomps".
Other people complain about "stomps".  And "steamrolls" and "insert preferred expressive term here".  Whatever.  🙂 

I was thinking while watching the video that I've said in the past, "Co-op players sink more ships per minute than most random players".
The whole <bleep>-ing objective of the battle is to sink the other team's ships and/or satisfy the battle mission criteria.  Whichever comes first, eh?

We're supposed to "get gud" enough to out-play "the other guy(s)".
And in the process, we may sink enough ships to create an advantage for our team. 
And if our team is decent, they'll be able to run with (or sail with?) that advantage and use it to sink red-team ships or at least force them to retreat.

This notion of a long drawn-out see-sawing battle of nail-biting drama and entertaining hijinks and paid-actors (like the submarine that practically served itself up to be sunk in the video) being the ideal battle is, in some ways, ludricrous (in my opinion).
That kind of drama can be found in soap-operas and swashbuckling adventure stories.

As entertaining as the hijinks and shennanigans may be, they're also "unprofessional", eh?
Because a team of "pros" should be able to "steamroll" a team of "average joes" (except in a dodgeball movie?), eh?  🙂 

Why make a battle last longer than necessary?
Seriously?  Why?
What are we waiting for?  Just sink 'em and be done with it.  🙂 
 

Lol you have been playing to much coop master wolf but I still love you. 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

57 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

I play all available ship types in all available game modes.

I'm not advocating for players to throw their ships away. 
I'm advocating for players to learn to play well and play together and do so with enough competence to win battles slightly more than 50% of the time.  😉 

Oh, for sure.

A lot of players have no concept about how to play their ships to either not die in the first five minutes...

...or how not to hide the whole game and have no influence whatever on the battle.

A lot of WG staff adamantly deny that we have a player population problem...but the data in our game experience shows very much the opposite.

Most players are very new, or very low skill. This applies now even up into tier 11 games. There is not a normal distribution of player skill.

A few really skilled players...and then divisions...and then intentionally unbalanced ships...all of this encouraging games to be one sided...

Are we really surprised that games are stomps most of the time?

I don't think the problem is solvable within WGs desired business model.

[Zysyss]

3 hours ago, yss_turtleship said:

FlimsyLunchTray comments on the topic of lopsided games as we have discussed here. Interestingly enough he also mentions the closing of the old forums and the departure of CCs, @LittleWhiteMouse,  @Chobittsu  , et al.
 

 

 

3 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

So his long, rambly point : the good players have left. Yes, I tend to agree.

Yes, we are leaving, for sure. I find myself playing less and less. Most of my friends who are above 55% win rates have left the game due to how bad high-tier gameplay has become. If you look at many of the unicum clans, you will see half of their members have not been on in months, and those that do come on are on just for clan battles and KoTs for the most part. I run MatchMakerMonitor and it is rare to see blue and purple stat players on the team. Teams on both sides are filled with yellow and red stat players, with maybe just a few green stat players mixed in. The I don't care, and the stats and wins do not matter players are filling up high-tier play.

Edited April 22 by Zysyss

[Rollingonit]

7 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

A lot of WG staff adamantly deny that we have a player population problem...but the data in our game experience shows very much the opposite.

Queues keep popping and they keep making money. So, yes, to WG it's fine.

The only thing that would ever make WG change is queues dont pop (mass, I mean 1-2k prime time population, sub 200 person non prime time), and mass closing of wallets.

You need people to stop playing to deny WG any gameplay metrics and stop spending money. Then maybe you might see some changes.

[Admiral_Karasu]

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Yet in your earlier post, you lament about players with 40% win-rates.
Which is worse?  A programmed 'Bot?  Or a human exhibiting poor play?

At least the 'Bots play to the objectives.  🙂 

Edited to add:  https://www.devstrike.net/topic/3651-flimsy-lunch-tray-comments-on-lopsided-games/?do=findComment&comment=48700

 

Uhm... predictability can get boring too. One of the reasons for my liking the Ocean, the other being it has no islands, and when you put two and two together you know why it is such a great map.

[Zysyss]

4 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Uhm... predictability can get boring too. One of the reasons for my liking the Ocean, the other being it has no islands, and when you put two and two together you know why it is such a great map.

The Ocean Map is the most realistic map in the game, for sure. 95%+ of all WWI and WWII naval battles were fought in open waters. 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

55 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Uhm... predictability can get boring too. One of the reasons for my liking the Ocean, the other being it has no islands, and when you put two and two together you know why it is such a great map.

I haven't seen Ocean map in months.

😞

[Admiral_Karasu]

7 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I haven't seen Ocean map in months.

😞

I know... me neither.

[USMC2145]

1 hour ago, Zysyss said:

 

Yes, we are leaving, for sure. I find myself playing less and less. Most of my friends who are above 55% win rates have left the game due to how bad high-tier gameplay has become. If you look at many of the unicum clans, you will see half of their members have not been on in months, and those that do come on are on just for clan battles and KoTs for the most part. I run MatchMakerMonitor and it is rare to see blue and purple stat players on the team. Teams on both sides are filled with yellow and red stat players, with maybe just a few green stat players mixed in. The I don't care, and the stats and wins do not matter players are filling up high-tier play.

Agree; sadly, too many players in today's World of Warships just want to watch their guns go pew pew and do not care about winning. When they die, they just go on to the next one and do it all over again, with no care about winning or being good. As this continues, more and more good players will leave and make it even worse.