I have been giving some thought to some of the match-making problems people have reported, and a lot of problems stem from not having enough people playing to always get great games ahead of time.
One great thing about the current matchmaking system is it sets a target score for your team to hit in order to gain rank points/not lose points even if you are predicted to lose, acting as a virtual handicap in the score. This is a good thing, but it faces two minor problems in implementation:
1. You don’t know pre-match what your target score actually is. Is it a “win” to hit 400, or is it 300.
2. Matches still feel imbalanced, even if it predicts you are only good for 200 points.
So this got me thinking….What if the Justin’s super-duper awesome match-prediction capabilities were used to give predicted pre-match handicaps to teams to make up for the lack of population. For instance, if your team has very little chance of winning, perhaps the match starts 100-0, to even the playing field. The handicap would be adjusted such that the expected chance of winning is at least 30% (35%).
Alternatively, the system could be used to tell your team a predicted target necessary for a “win” but this might still face the problem of not having the satisfying scenario of a close finish going for that 500 point mark.
For many games, matchmaking is actually great and games are a close fight the whole way. There are even some blow-outs that easily could have gone the other way. However, sometimes there are games that feel like the other team only has 4 (even though you see all 5 playing). It makes me wonder would those games be more fun if the opposing team were given a 200 point head-start.
What do you think?
Should handicaps be a thing?
Should it be a point difference at the start of a match so that they end closer to 500?
Alternatively, should point-targets be given pre-match so that your team has its own goal when winning is out of reach?