Age of Conan PvP Matchmaking Web Application

Hey boys and girls,

I am working on a web application to address some of the issues I have seen many people discuss since the game released. Below are some of the things this application will offer. If you can think of anything that you would like to see included please let me know.

  1. Matchmaking - I have 3 different Queue’s I have thought of which I will describe below along with a poll. Teams will be balanced based on Elo. Both teams will be required to have 2 healers each, no more than 2 tanks, no more than 2 mages, and no more than 2 rogues for a match to be made.

  2. Elo - Rating associated with an individuals character. Winning results in points being added and losing results in points being lost.

  3. Ranks -
    S = 1%
    A = 7%
    B = 21%
    C = 21%
    D = 21%
    E = 21%
    F = 8%

  4. Premade - 2 organized teams playing each other, this will allow for sets to be organized and the results of each game to persist (can be used in stats analyzing)

  5. Tournament - a series of premades resulting in tournament placings.

  6. Stats - Character win/loses, Character kill/death, matchup statistics (how well does osid perform when he is against teslarr), really any kind of aggregation that can be done against wins/loses, kills/deaths, team makeup, and time ranges will be possible.

  7. Teams - pretty straight forward. a group of players that can challenge another team to a premade or join a tournament.

  8. Parties - One thing that many of my friends enjoyed was when we could sign up for minigames together. I think this would be great to bring back for Matchmaking. The limit I thought of should be 3 or 4 players grouped max.

  9. Punishment - cheaters, afkers, leavers, etc. will be punished. When playing in a match made game or a premade users will be able to start a vote which if it reaches enough approval the user being reported will have a punishment handed out.

I.E if player A sees player B hiding his gear he can start a vote indicating the issue. All other participants will be notified of the issue and can vote to agree or disagree with the accusation within some predefined time (30 seconds or something). I’m not sure how many reports need to take place before temp/permanent bans need to start being dealt out.

  1. Voice chat - this will be integrated with discord so when you join a match made game you will be provided a link to join a channel in discord for your match and your team.

Matchmaking Queues:

  1. Classic - 6v6 Team Deathmatch. Everyone will be required to turn on equipment viewing. All participants will be required to either wear PVP tier 1 gear or PVE tier 3 and below gear (no T3 crafted weapons). NO khitai gear. NO RF rings. NO chaos rings. NO pit fighters/gladiators accessories. NO runes PERIOD. NO store bought potions. NO refined potions. NO KHITAI BLESSINGS. NO LODESTONES. NO ASTROLABES. NO MORPHS. IF YOU NEED TO CONSUME SOMETHING THAT GIVES YOU A LIMITED TIME BONUS IT IS PROBABLY BANNED. If you feel that the pvp tier 1 rings lack protection, there is a protection ring, the crafting recipe drops in crows nest and the rings can be bought from the trader. If you have any questions about whether a piece of gear is allowed please ask in this thread.

  1. Unchained - 6v6 Team Deathmatch. Everyone will be required to turn on equipment viewing. PVE T1-T4 is allowed, PVP T1-T3 is allowed, NO RF rings. NO chaos rings. NO runes PERIOD. NO store bought potions. NO refined potions. NO KHITAI BLESSINGS. NO LODESTONES. NO MORPHS. NO ASTROLABES. IF YOU NEED TO CONSUME SOMETHING THAT GIVES YOU A LIMITED TIME BONUS IT IS PROBABLY BANNED. If you are worried about protection in the ring accessory slot use the pvp 6 Highlord’s Band of Slaughter.

  1. Quick Match - You will be placed in either a classic or unchained match depending on which queue meets the requirements for a match to begin first.

Polls:

  1. How many players should be allowed to queue together?
  • 2 players
  • 3 players
  • 4 players

0 voters

  1. Are you satisfied with the matchmaking queue options?
  • Yes
  • No
  • I’d like to see some things changed (see reply)

0 voters

  1. Which maps should be available for matchmaking?
  • Hallowed Vaults
  • Lost Temple
  • Totem Torrent
  • Blood Ravine

0 voters

  1. Do you want separate queues based on Elo (low ranking players only get matched with low ranking players and high ranking players only get matched with high ranking players)? I am not sure if there is enough of a population for this but I’d like to gauge the communities opinion on the subject.
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

  1. Would you like to see capture the flag or some other game type offered (Kings, etc.)?
  • Yes (reply)
  • No

0 voters

  1. Do you agree with the ranking distribution?
  • Yes
  • No (reply)

0 voters

If there is anything I missed or you have any questions please let me know. I have made pretty good progress on the application already and I think I can have the matchmaking ready in the next couple of weeks. The reporting system will probably go live a few weeks after the release as that will be a bit more involved.

Additional Polls

  1. Should characters who are known afkers/cheaters be banned from the get-go?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

  1. For unchained should T3 crafted be banned?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

  1. For unchained should T5 and T6 Armor and weapons be banned?
  • Yes
  • No
  • Only Weapons
  • Only Armor

0 voters

  1. Should all runes be banned for matchmaking?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

  1. Should premades affect Elo?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Matchmaking Process:

The highest Elo players from each team will be captains.

Each captain will have three buttons they can select after the game has started. Win/Lose/Draw.

For a match to be completed one side must select win and one must select lose OR both sides select draw.

Once that phase is complete every player will have a popup asking them to input their kills/deaths

They will have 30 seconds to do that

After that 30 seconds the captains will be prompted to sign off on their teams scores and the winning captain will be asked to upload a screenshot.

Captains will be able to update any of their players scores. If their is any discrepancies between the kill/death count between the 2 teams the captains will be requested to verify and fix any scores before finalizing.

Id like some feedback on the matchmaking queue options, lets get the discussion on those going.

Ring of protection can be bought off trader, the ring itself does not drop from crows nest, only the recipe iirc

Thanks, I’ll update the post.

I think that cap on the PVE gear should be T4 not T5. As that is what is accessible to most players through RF and such.

Refined potions is that purified pots? If so allow those as I do not want to have 2 stacks of different pots :slight_smile: and these aren’t that hard to come by. (renown 7)

Refined is the crit/damage/etc pots that drop in pvp from chests that cannot be bought from the pvp armory. The potions that can be bought from the armory are allowed but if people think those should be banned ill add that to the list.

Purified (guild city) health/stamina/mana potions are allowed.

standing ovation !!!

ramble meant guild city daggamalts, which are totally ok

there exists 135 crit dmg brew that isn’t refined btw (acute striking one)

One thing I thought might be able handle the balancing issue when one team has a party and the other does not would be to adjust the value of that parties Elo based on group size. The goal would be to offset the coordination of grouped teams by stacking the other team accordingly.

I changed the formula from what I had it originally. Below will be the formula for calculating adjusted Elo for groups.

e = expected average of expected elo same value as k in below formula
a = actual average of cumulative elo
p = percentage of difference to take
p = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((e - a) / 800))

The 800 in the above formula indicates for each 800 rating points of advantage over the opponent, the expected score is magnified ten times in comparison to the opponent’s expected score.

A team with an average elo of 2000 would be expected to win 93% of the time.
1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((1050 - 2000) / 800)) = 0.93

a = adjusted elo
c = cumulative elo
k = expected elo coefficient
m = number of players in group
b = percentage added based on group size (2 = 5%, 3 = 15%, 4 = 25%)

a = c + (c - km) * p + |(c - km)| * b

I will demonstrate a couple of scenarios:

k = 1050

  1. 4 new players grouping together (708,822,915,891) with a cumulative elo of 3336

1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((1050 - 834) / 800)) = 0.35

3336 + (3336 - (1050 * 4)) * 0.35 + |(3336 - (1050 * 4))| * 0.25 = 3249.6

In this scenario this group would be matched up with 2 higher elo players to balance out the match.

  1. 4 experienced players grouping together (1310, 1155, 1521, 1289) with a cumulative elo of 5275

1 / (1 + 10 ^ ((1050 - 1319) / 800)) = 0.68

5275 + (5275 - (1050 * 4)) * 0.68 + (5275 - (1050 * 4)) * 0.25 = 6275

In this scenario this group would be matched up with 2 newer players.

The expected elo coefficient will be taken nightly and calculated as described below.
The coefficient will be the mean of all character elo’s that have played at least 10 games in the current season.

Giovanni smart. Butt wiper like

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What’s the point of an ELO system if it doesn’t match you against similarly skilled players? I’m confused why anyone would vote against that idea itself. However I do agree that the population is too small for this to work out

The idea is to create matches that are balanced. You won’t end up in a situation where all the good players end up on one team or one team has a healer and the other does not.

im talking about #4. I dont see why people wouldnt want it to match you against similarly skilled players.

I think the purpose of #4 (or how I understood it) was asking if players ONLY wanted to play with / against players of the same skill level. For example, all players of a team would have to be of steel league potentail if “yes” was selected. People who selected “No” are indicating that they are OK with the teams being created so that people from all skill levels would be on a team, but the two teams would have roughly equal MMR/ELO

Can understand nothing but …very interesting xDD

there can many things to draw from this question.

1st of all I think he’s asking how people think the population will hold up, like do people feel like it’s ok to compromise a bit, and let high skilled players be teamed with low skilled, instead of separating the two. For the sake of having games pop more frequently.

He’s also asking what people feel about mixing the two. I think it’s gonna be favorable if a quartet of 4 high skilled get teamed with 2 lower skilled, as the lower skilled then will have a chance to get a feel for how the high skilled play, and learn from them.

It’s gonna be frustrating for both sides at times, but there is a positive with the learning aspect, and with the population at hand, I don’t think we have a choice. Therefore I vote no.

Even when we are hosting pug premades it is often we don’t have a full 12 squad of high skilled players, so I think it’s inevitable.

If the use of the app becomes widespread though, and a full set of high skilled and a full set of low skilled are using the app at the same time, I would consider changing my vote ofc.

This sums it up well. If we were to completely split the skilled players from the lesser skilled players it may be too difficult to get matches to pop. The matchmaking will try to make 2 teams as evenly balanced (Elo and archetype) as possible.

I am almost ready to open the site for early access testing. Below is a screenshot of the matchmaking options and their respective rulesets. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

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