Matchmaking fail due to player stupidity

Many players of World of Tanks claim that the matchmaking system is bad and believe that the company is intentionally messing with them, giving them impossible matchups.

To check this, I simply guessed which side will win before the match started. I had 68% chance to guess correctly in 350 matches since I started this experiment. This is extremely high. I mean that if we round it to 66.6, it means that only 2/3 of the matches are even, 1/3 is pre-determined (I'm wrong 1/3 by guessing, so I'm also right in 1/3 by blind guess, the rest 1/3 are not guessed). This is really a serious matchmaking issue.

The reason why there is only murmur on the World of Tanks forums and no uproar, is not only that you have equal chance to be in the "I win even if I'm AFK" team as in the "if I win this, I get a Kolobanov's medal" team. The reason is that the matchmaking system is technically not wrong. It's wrong in handling player stupidity. It doesn't misplace certain tanks (for example placing a Maus to a Tier 3-5 match would be such mistake). Sometimes the same tanks win, sometimes lose for no obvious reason. Also the same matchmaking is not wrong for organized teams, meaning if two equally good clans would play with the sides, the outcome wouldn't be pre-determined, so the problem can remain hidden front of experienced players and developers.

Let me show some schemes how ways matchmaking fail. The first is "alike teams win over diverse". This is totally counter-intuitive. If some clan leader would be given the task of "create a perfect team from tier 8 tanks", none of them would create an all-Type 59, all-ISU152 or all-Tiger II teams. Such teams would be devastated by a properly organized team. Yet in a random match I'd guarantee that either of the above teams would have 95% win rate against a diverse team. Why? Just look at the way how different teams position next to an obstacle (Meds have their cannons higher so they can shoot over the low side of the obstacle)
Tanks of the same type play similarly so they can naturally support each other. To support a different tank, you need to think, which is impossible for the average player. He ignores line of fire of other tanks, especially if they are away from him. Also, he is unable to determine the actions of the enemy team, even if it's obvious. If on Ensk one side has 5 Type 59, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they will rush on the park side. Yet the enemy won't place heavies and TDs to the end of the park side and hide the arty in the city side. They will send their 2-3 mediums on park side and the arty will be in the park side corner as always.

The second is the scout rush disaster. For some weird reason people believe that the job of the scout is not scouting but to rush to the enemy base and kill the enemy arty. So they try. They might succeed, they might fail, but at the end of the first minute they will be dead. Or yelled at. Since artillery is extremely effective, their success or failure can make or break a match. It depends on the amount of scouts vs amount of tank destroyers and slow heavy tanks. The TDs camp, the slow heavies simply did not get far enough. So looking at the scout:TD/slow ratios of the teams can quickly tell what will happen with the arty. Obviously no game mechanic stops a fast medium from camping next to the arty for just one minute. But they just won't. For example we have 3 scouts, the enemy has one. If they have 7-9 slow tanks/TDs, we are outnumbered 14:12 after the first minute. If they have just 4-6, they have no arty.

The third is the "no arty: campers party!". A standing tank is less visible and aim much better than a moving. So in a 1v1 battle a standing tank always wins. To avoid everyone standing, artillery was introduced to the game in a very unnatural way: the arties in a WWII settings are capable of XXI century GPS-based indirect fire with XXI century accuracy. Their firepower is also huge. Practically they can oneshot everything that is visible and stands in the same place long enough to lock on. This feature counters camping, forcing tanks to move after revealing their position by firing. The amount of artillery varies in matches and strongly effect the value of different styles. Since players are usually dumb like a rock, their style is pre-determined and usually reflected by their chosen tank class. The fast medium will rush even if there is no enemy arty. Even better, the scouts will rush too and after death they will spam "ffs arty i spotted dem why no shoot". TDs will camp even when the enemy has 4 alive arties. So looking at the arty count and the camper count you can tell who will win. This problem is not obvious to a developer who would naturally play more defensively when no arty barrage is incoming and move more often when there are 3+. Of course this interacts with the second point which decides arty survival.

The fourth is my personal favorite: "kill them all XDDD". It happens when the highest level tanks on one side are fast while the other team has slow or TD as top tanks. This means that the first half of the battle the strong fast tanks massacre the weak enemy fast tanks, getting 5-6 kills ahead. Despite all the dead are from the lowest of tiers, they declare themselves winner and rush out to hunt down the few "remaining survivors". The battle between a camping 100% HP ISU-152 and an incoming 40% Type59 who races with some T6 med who gets to the "easy kills" first is pretty fun... if you like camping.

There can be other schemes which are unknown to me as I don't play those tanks, so probably after playing all classes I could guess who'll win with 80-85% accuracy. However the bottom line of all these can be given: since the average player can't adapt, certain compositions that support strategies needing little thinking (all rush left ftw) are overpowered, while other compositions that tempt into stupid mistakes are underpowered, despite the same compositions are OK in the hand of competent players.

Playing a game where victory is decided before start is not fun. This can be solved two ways: one is implementing a brain into players, but that's out of scope of a gaming company. The other is much more restrictive matchmaking system that enforces that both teams are equally strong in every tank classes (TD, medium, heavy, light, SPG) and not just overall. Also the most determining class, the SPG should be pre-set to 1-3, so there is no battle without SPG or with 4 and more SPGs. It would slow down the matchmaking.

World of Warcraft solved this problem by class homogenization and "bring the player, not the class". Being a mage or a rogue is merely cosmetic difference. The only real difference is between roles so the same problem exits on the random BGs: you can tell who'll win by counting the healers on both sides.

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Cap!

Few things puzzles me more than the inability of lot of players in World of Tanks to capture the enemy base.

No, I'm not talking about dying on the way there. I mean making it there, and not capturing but wandering away to find that last few enemies. Or not so few. Usually their bizarre behavior is just annoying waste of time, as it can take several minutes to find that last few tanks hiding somewhere. But in few, but not very rare case (I'd guess 3-5%) they lose the match because of it. The enemy captures while they are wandering around or simply the remaining enemies kill them all. Such loss is very annoying as it is clearly because of human stupidity. Obviously it's two-sided, I also won several matches where the enemy who clearly won did not cap.

I tell the two most memorable events: the first happened in Himmelsdorf. My girlfriend and me, with two randoms went up the hill. Killed three enemies there and lost one of the randoms. The rest of our team died without a single kill and the enemy started capturing. We ran down the enemy base, mostly in the hope to kill an AFK or arty before the inevitable defeat. However the capture indicator started to jump back as more and more people left the zone and went hunting for us. We killed an AFK and started capping, revealing our position, which made them run to us. One by one, fast ones arriving first. We won, after killing two or three scouts. From the capture bar we could tell that only a lone enemy tried to do the right thing: stand in the capture circle. The other happened on Arctic region when 5 vs 4 were alive after both teams zerged clockwise. Our 4 tanks reached the enemy capture zone, and started capturing. 3 enemies arrived to our base. I was defending and took two out before going down. This revealed where one of the enemies is. So the 4 tanks, all in the capture zone left it yelling "kill it, more points!". They were two Tier 7 and a pair of T5 who got in a platoon with someone. The helpless lone target was a Maus...

The funny thing is that the "Killing all enemies give no special rewards" statement is a loading screen wisdom, yet people keep claiming that killing them all is somehow more points. Such logic could be understood from someone who is far from the capture zone, but those who are near could enjoy the sure rewards of capturing and still leave it.

So this is something that I can't figure out, just watch it as a disaster happening.

Hot tip: if you are in a weak tank, don't rush and die, save yourself for later, and go cap. Others will ignore the opportunity.

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Why don't they teach instead?

Blizzard decided to nerf the normal and hard modes, despite the LFR feature was made exactly to those who look for an easy mode raid. Their explanation is "Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall. We have actually statistical date we base our changes on, we know exactly how many people are clearing these raids each week, we know exactly how many people are able to down just a few bosses, and how many were only able to down a few bosses every week for weeks on end and then stopped raiding altogether." "Your solution is ``Well then they should get better or quit`` and that's just not reasonable for a video game comprised of millions of people looking to just have some fun. It's still a computer game. "

The strange thing here is that Blizzard sees only two options "getting better" or "quit" and since they don't see the first happening and don't want the second, they hand out welfare. The obvious idea of helping these players to be better was not even mentioned.

Blizzard gives very little help in getting better in the game. During leveling abilities are given without quests that teach them how to use them and also you can get to max level facerolling. On max level you need to improve to raid, but you must either figure it out yourself or use third party tools. There is no damage meter in the game for example. Also there is absolutely no information about mechanic fails. You must install external addons to figure out if your DPS is OK or not, and to figure out why did you die. It's not a trivial issue, even with serious raiding experience. A new player can honestly think that he is good, and just met some internet trolls who badmouth him with some "below the tank" crap.

The bossfights could have result tables like battlegrounds with damage done, healing done and avoidable damage taken. Also, some friendly NPC could instantly whisper the player if he fails a mechanic like "Ysera whispers: Ultraxion just hit you with his devastating spell Hour of Twilight. You can avoid it by escaping the Twilight realm using your Heroic Will". They could also provide rotation info by a chart of your damage by spell vs a chart of the average of the top 1000 players of your spec, so the newbie fire mage could notice that those people don't use frostbolt.

Coding these would be trivial as addons are already doing it pretty well. I'm sure that those who want to raid would be grateful for such help and with that they could progress using the constant "buffs" coming from gear upgrades of the few bosses they killed and valor stuff. We did. We were those who kept wiping on Deatwing again and again and finally killed him.

So why do Blizzard avoids to give so simple tools as a damage meter and a fail warning? Because the players the nerfs are aimed at is still a small minority. WoWprogress says that at this moment Morchok was killed by 43.3K guilds. Deathwing was killed by 21K. With the usual 20 raider/guild approximation it's 870K and 420K. Out of about 8M players.

Those who killed Deathwing are the top 5%. Those who are stuck on Hagara because not standing in the ice wall is hard, are still in the top 10%. Yes. The guy who can't kill Hagara in late January is in the top 10%.

The people who are in the top 10% but not in the top 5% would love to have some help. They could use it. Such tools could stop them failing on mechanics and would help them increasing DPS from 85% of theoretical to 90%. But what about the rest? Who are those who are too bad to kill Morchok normal? They are the "fun ppl" who are not simply "bad" in the sense of don't know enough of the game. The "fun ppl" come with the unshakable belief that they are special snowflakes who deserve respect, love and reward just for being so awesome.

If the game would remind him that he is not awesome, he would simply quit. He is not here to be "insulted" or "criticized". He is here to be called a hero and showered in rewards. If he doesn't get it, he leaves.

The guy who fails on Hagara lacks knowledge and routine compared to us, but his "work ethic", his governing ideas are the same. He knows that there are tasks where you must perform and he tries. He knows that coming short of the challenge causes defeat. He accepts it, that's why he stops raiding. He doesn't throw a fit or ragequit the game, just don't raid anymore, and without raiding there isn't much to do in the game. The guy who fails on Hagara is maybe a bad player, but an intelligent person.

The lolkid who answers "fu nolifer prick" when I tell that he damaged less than me (resto shaman), isn't a bad player. He is a terrible person in the real life, whose terrible attitude manifests in the game. Blizzard wants to keep his subscription so they don't tell him that he sucks. And since they can't tell these failures the truth, they can't help those who are not failures, but simply uninformed.

We can help these players by writing blogs and by leading raids where we give numerically proven feedback to them, with tips how to improve. Also, we shall not whine over the nerfs or call them names. Having them in the game is good for the game and us as some of them will improve and join us. Having the unique snowflakes is bad for the game. And for the World.

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You are not the player, you are the content

Below you can find my results within the World of Tanks game using an ISU-152 tank destroyer with and without the BL-10 cannon (with BL = all - without): The difference is stunning. By upgrading the cannon my damage and kills doubled, my win chance increased from way below average to slightly above average and my XP/battle (XP needed for further upgrades) also increased significantly.

No doubt that this game is extremely gear dependent. OK, who cares, you get the BL-10 and enjoy! Except in the game experience is locked to the tank. You can only research the BL-10 by playing the tank without it. The BL-10 costs 55000 XP and it's heavy so you must first research a new suspension to be able to install it. That's another 15000XP. To collect 70K XP with my XP/battle you need to play 150 matches.

Or, you can just pay some real money and convert the experience of other tanks (which are already researched or even item-shop bought). From the fact that I had only 42K XP when I stopped using the old cannon, you can guess that I paid. On the top of the "subscription" that already increased my XP gain by 50% without it I'd have to play 225 battles with the old cannon.

OK, you might think that this system is the trick of the developers to force you into paying. However they could do it much more easily: the first 4 tiers of tanks are free to play, but you must pay to advance. Just like you can freely play the first 20 levels of WoW and must pay to continue.

However this system is not a demo mode, like the first 20 levels of WoW. Not only it allows evasion (after all, you could play 225 battles), but also frustrating which isn't the best way to get new customers. Imagine that on the trial account you could only play battlegrounds, naked. I doubt WoW would get many new players. Also a player who can't pay just ignores the game, while the one who hated it will make bad word of mouth. So why do microtransaction games allow freeloaders to linger and use server resources while frustrate them at the same time, alienating them from the game?

Because they are not players. They are the content. Their purpose in the game is to suck, therefore provide amusement to the real players: the ones who pay. The real players are having fun both killing them and being ahead of them on the meters. It's much more clever than PvE nerfs: everyone knew that WotLK "heroics" were faceroll, so the players said "meh I had to grind another 3 HCs for points" instead of "Yay I defeated those huge monsters!". Even those players said and believed that who were boosted and couldn't do even the WotLK "heroics" with 4 like-skilled fellows. On the other hand the player of World of Tanks who kills an ISU-152 without BL-10 with his Type59 tank could not know that his target couldn't fight back, he was tricked into believing that he is awesome, since other ISUs (ones ran by paying players) could kill him.

This is the reason why Free to Play increase the income of the companies. Most players are socials who just want to feel awesome. They can't pass challenges, they want easy wins, but in the same time they don't want grinds that are observed easy by peers. Free to play allows creating "NPCs" that look and act like players, but they are still just NPCs whose strength was designed to be easily defeatable by most players.

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Te bright future of gold bid

We tried 80+ on Deathwing extending the first week lockout. Couldn't kill him. We farmed a month and he went down in 5 tries.

This proves a significant shift from the WotLK and 4.0-4.1 design. Output now matters and dance is secondary. In the previous contents literally blue geared players could kill end season bosses as long as they did not fail in the various bizarre dance moves. While the Dragon Soul bosses still have annoying amount of dance, they also have performance requirements. You can wipe despite no dance fails if you have insufficient DPS and HPS.

This design works as you can see from the statistics of MMO champion. On the first month 67K players completed Firelands, but 175K Dragon Soul and 1.31M LFR. The content is clearly used by players but still not facerolled and spitted on. We have every reason to believe that this way of design will continue (success continues, failure fixed)

However such approach increase the importance of gear. In WotLK and 4.0 but especially in 4.2 gear was purely cosmetic or "quality of life" feature, providing only bragging rights and faster runs. In DS and probably MoP gear will significantly effect your performance and chance of kills.

However this rises the question of gear distribution systems. At first I'd like to point out that in a fixed-roster guild gear distribution is irrelevant. The piece will increase the future performance of the raid, regardless of who wield it. Besides loot whores (socials who want to show off their gear), no one will gives a damn who gets the drop as long as he doesn't quit instantly. If you don't get drops, you still enjoy their benefits as your raid can kill more bosses.

In non-fixed raids on the other hand gear distribution will be crucial. There you must mind your own gear as there is absolutely no guarantee that the other guy will raid with you again. He can stop playing, he can quit the guild, he can go casual, he can simply raid on other days as you and you can leave too. In such guilds the only gear that increase the performance of your future raids is your own gear.

So let's analyze the loot systems from the non-fixed perspective:

• /roll: totally random, so totally "fair". Far from it! You can only roll on upgrades (and actually there is no point rolling for non-upgrades), so the more geared you are, the less items you can roll on. On the other hand the guy in starter gear who did half of your performance can roll on everything, including that last piece you want. /roll favors undergeared players seriously and give no incentive to players with gear to participate
• Loot council: this is a complete nonsense in a non-fixed system even if the council is completely unbiased and fair (good luck finding such). The reason is that the "perfect" loot council distributes the loot according to the needs of the raid. But the very point is that there is no such thing as "the raid" in a non-fixed environment. So even the "perfect" council will decide based on the blind guess on "who will stay longer and be more active".
• DKP: fair if the guild remains successful and active in raiding. You earn DKP according to your effort and you can buy gear from it. But in a casually raiding guild "successful and active" cannot be guaranteed by definition. If everyone comes and goes as he pleases no one can tell if there will be raid tomorrow. Or ever. So you just gather your DKP and then the guild stops raiding and your DKP worth zero. Also, just because some guy were raiding under this guild name longer, he'll have more DKP despite he did not do anything more for your success. He got his DKP raiding with other people.

Please also note that if the DKP and loot council would magically work (council is perfect, guild keeps on raiding actively), both will reward the more frequent players, turning the guild into a fixed-attendance one as they will soon seriously overgear everyone else, so even if the guild rules remain casual, the casual players only get spot when the alternative is 9-manning, just in a HC guild. However you are in the guild exactly to be able to raid without fixed attendance.

This leaves nothing but gold bid. Here you are instantly compensated for your performance. You get something that is not bound to the guild, something that you can use instantly by buying BoEs, consumables, enchants, gems. I believe gold bid will become the standard in non-fixed roster raiding guilds. We use it for more than a year without a single loot drama or even debate.

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Diablo 3 Beta Phishing Season Begins

The scammers are out in force with the recent Diablo 3 beta opt-in announcement.  

Phishing scams are very common around any Blizzard beta release announcement so it is time to be especially on your guard.


I received the following in my in-box today:

Greetings from Blizzard Entertainment!

We’re gearing up for the forthcoming launch of Diablo III and would like to extend you an invitation toparticipate in the beta test. If you are interested in participating, you need to have a Battle.net account, which you can create on our Battle.net website.

We will flag you for access to the Diablo III beta test when we begin admitting press. You do not need to go through the opt-in process.

To secure your place among the first of Sanctuary’s heroes,Please use the following template below to verify your account and information via email.

* Name:
* Battle.account name:
* Password:
* Country:
* E-mail Address:

Thanks and see you all in the Burning Hells!

The email claims to give you an express beta invite without having to go through the formal opt-in process. Naturally, this is a phishing attempt aimed at getting hold your valuable battle.net account details. The reply email address resolves into a d3-blizzard.com domain which, not-so-surprisingly, is registered in China:

Domain Name: D3-BLIZZARD.COM
   Registrar: HICHINA ZHICHENG TECHNOLOGY LTD.
   Whois Server: grs-whois.hichina.com
   Referral URL: http://www.net.cn
   Name Server: DNS27.HICHINA.COM
   Name Server: DNS28.HICHINA.COM
   Status: ok
   Updated Date: 29-aug-2011
   Creation Date: 29-aug-2011
   Expiration Date: 29-aug-2012

Remember, Blizzard will never ask your for your battle.net password - be wary of any communications that requests this.

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Top WoW Phishing Scams for March 2011

I have established a WoW phishing honeypot and I see a lot of active phishing scams.  I thought I would take the time to cover off the top two WoW phishing scams for March :

#1 Titled "Too Many Attempts Warning No.x" - 37% of WoW scams

The most common phishing scam for March comes in the form of a straight text email that warns you that your account has been locked due to too many login attempts. It provides a link to restore your account, but naturally points to a fake battle.net site, where your account details are captured.

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Dear customer, 

Due to suspicious activity, your Battle.net account has been locked. You tried to login your account too many times (403). We are concerned about whether your account has been stolen. In order to guarantee the legitimacy of your account, we need you follow these steps:

Step 1: Secure Your ComputerIn the event that your computer has been infected with malicious software such as a keylogger or trojan, simply changing your password may not deter future attacks without first ensuring that your computer is free from these programs. Please visit our Account Security website to learn how to secure your computer from unauthorized access.

Step 2: Secure Your E-mail AccountAfter you have secured your computer, check your e-mail filters and rules and look for any e-mail forwarding rules that you did not create. For more information on securing your e-mail account, visit our Support page.

Step 3: Restore access to Your accountWe now provide a secure link for you to verify whether you have taken the appropriate steps to secure the account, your computer, and your email address. Please follow this site to restore the access to your account: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If you still have questions or concerns after following the steps above, feel free to contact Customer Support at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Sincerely, 

The Battle.net Account Team 

Online Privacy Policy
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#2 Titled "Account Change" - 26% of WoW scams

This scam attempts to scare you into thinking that your contact information has been illegally modified and entices you to log in to a fake site to verify your account information.

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Hello,
This is an automated notification regarding your Battle.net account. Some or all of your contact information was recently modified through the Account Management website.

*** If you made recent account changes, please disregard this automatic notification.
*** If you did NOT make any changes to your account, we recommend you log in to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx review your account settings.

If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, or if unauthorized changes continue to happen, please contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for further assistance.

Billing & Account Services can be reached at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (1-800-592-5499 Mon-Fri, 8AM-8PM Pacific Time) or at billing@blizzard.com.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives will typically lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Regards,
The Battle.net Support Team 

Blizzard Entertainment

www.blizzard.com/support 

Online Privacy Policy

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Other active scams including a "7 days free access offer", "investigations on the sale/trade of your game account" and various "compensation" emails.  I have also started to see scams for LOTRO and RIFT.  You know that you have made it as an MMO when you see active phishing scams - sad, but true.

Learn more about the mechanics of these scams.

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