Rubber banding shit to make skill mismatches still competitive is a dogshit excuse for game design that completely and utterly destroys the integrity of competition.
We are not talking about evenly-matched teams. The integrity of dirt-tier matches is ruined by pros on fresh accounts. People so infatuated with a child’s view of “competition” that nothing matters besides winning. Teamwork? Sportsmanship? Fun? Fuck that, just win win win win win win win.
Skill-based matchmaking is already a judgement call for how well you’re supposed to do. And each long-ass match is rife with ways to judge how well a player is doing - moment to moment - relative to their teammates, their situation, and their character. Measuring and rewarding individual skill is possible even if your team gets utterly destroyed. Or carried by one cheating bastard.
Games can be fun to play for reasons besides ‘did you win.’ Success and growth can be about more than ‘don’t lose.’ This is a game that takes ten people forty-five minutes to play. Reducing it to a binary outcome, as if that’s the only metric for “the integrity of competition,” is the root problem.
Games can be fun to play for reasons besides ‘did you win.’
They’re fun when they’re fair. They’re not fun when they’re not fair. Losing fairly is part of the experience. Losing unfairly isn’t. Winning unfairly isn’t.
Rubber banding isn’t unconditionally horse shit game design in every context because of the end result. It’s because it fundamentally breaks the mechanics of the game. A high skill ceiling isn’t a design flaw. It’s the entire purpose of the game.
Fair games won’t be affected. Evenly-matched teams do not need this.
Anything can become a flaw when it causes awful results. Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed outcomes. MOBAs are all toxic as fuck - that’s no accident. The choices shared by these games, cause the problems shared by these games.
These are systemic problems. They cannot be solved by attacking the symptoms. You have to address the cause.
If you could magically identify smurfs, you could just put them at the level they should be or ban them without putting them in a match. There’s no such thing as rubber banding that only affects cheating.
A meaningful skill gap resulting in a rout is the whole point of a competitive game. It’s the definition of a competitive game. It’s why people are playing. Go play a casual game with a low skill ceiling it that’s what you want to play. Don’t play a game with a high one then demand that they break it.
There is no possible scenario where rubber banding can ever be better than dogshit game design. The core concept is incompatible with sound mechanics. The person playing better is supposed to get better results.
If you could magically identify smurfs, you could just put them at the level they should be or ban them without putting them in a match
That’s what league does. If it detects early on that you’re probably a smurf, you get tossed into smurf queue where you’ll face other experienced players, and it’s pretty reliable. Both times I’ve made new accounts, I’ve almost immediately gotten placed with experienced players, usually before the account graduates beyond bot games
Fuck all of this.
Rubber banding shit to make skill mismatches still competitive is a dogshit excuse for game design that completely and utterly destroys the integrity of competition.
Evenly-matched teams won’t need any.
We are not talking about evenly-matched teams. The integrity of dirt-tier matches is ruined by pros on fresh accounts. People so infatuated with a child’s view of “competition” that nothing matters besides winning. Teamwork? Sportsmanship? Fun? Fuck that, just win win win win win win win.
Skill-based matchmaking is already a judgement call for how well you’re supposed to do. And each long-ass match is rife with ways to judge how well a player is doing - moment to moment - relative to their teammates, their situation, and their character. Measuring and rewarding individual skill is possible even if your team gets utterly destroyed. Or carried by one cheating bastard.
Games can be fun to play for reasons besides ‘did you win.’ Success and growth can be about more than ‘don’t lose.’ This is a game that takes ten people forty-five minutes to play. Reducing it to a binary outcome, as if that’s the only metric for “the integrity of competition,” is the root problem.
They’re fun when they’re fair. They’re not fun when they’re not fair. Losing fairly is part of the experience. Losing unfairly isn’t. Winning unfairly isn’t.
Rubber banding isn’t unconditionally horse shit game design in every context because of the end result. It’s because it fundamentally breaks the mechanics of the game. A high skill ceiling isn’t a design flaw. It’s the entire purpose of the game.
Smurfed games aren’t fair.
Fair games won’t be affected. Evenly-matched teams do not need this.
Anything can become a flaw when it causes awful results. Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed outcomes. MOBAs are all toxic as fuck - that’s no accident. The choices shared by these games, cause the problems shared by these games.
These are systemic problems. They cannot be solved by attacking the symptoms. You have to address the cause.
If you could magically identify smurfs, you could just put them at the level they should be or ban them without putting them in a match. There’s no such thing as rubber banding that only affects cheating.
A meaningful skill gap resulting in a rout is the whole point of a competitive game. It’s the definition of a competitive game. It’s why people are playing. Go play a casual game with a low skill ceiling it that’s what you want to play. Don’t play a game with a high one then demand that they break it.
There is no possible scenario where rubber banding can ever be better than dogshit game design. The core concept is incompatible with sound mechanics. The person playing better is supposed to get better results.
That’s what league does. If it detects early on that you’re probably a smurf, you get tossed into smurf queue where you’ll face other experienced players, and it’s pretty reliable. Both times I’ve made new accounts, I’ve almost immediately gotten placed with experienced players, usually before the account graduates beyond bot games