mursie wrote:Ninepaces wrote:
Skill is about maximizing your contribution through the use of the tools available. Making your 1 person character do more and contribute more and be better than 1 person with the same tools of the opposing faction. So in situations where the numbers are balanced or close to balanced the added value of the skilled player tips the balance in your factions favour.
Your analysis doesn't explore all situations. Its stops at the most basic and favourable situation for a premade... fighting unorganized groups of the same number.
Ok, and again apologies on my inability to quickly process this, you are saying that skill is best measured when "numbers are balanced or close to balanced" and you make your "character do more and contribute more and be better than 1 person with the same tools of the opposing faction."
I think I agree with this completely. My question for you would be: Do you think, with the current population and playerbase in RoR, the majority of scenarios are "balanced or close to balanced"? If not, why not?
A lot of different situations measure skill. This is how I see it:
Every player is between a 0 and 1. 0 totally afk, naked, bad setup
contributes nothing. 1 is perfect gear, solid setup, best positioning,
contributes the maximum his class can contribute. Essentially the closer to 1 you are, the more you contribute, the more "skilled" you are. (Yes I think there is skill in running the proper gear, tactics and builds).
Your individual contribution can be magnified by being part of an organized group, like a premade. This explains why 6 people of good quality can sometimes defeat 24 people of average quality even though separately 1 of the premaders can not defeat 4 of the puggers. So if a premade is made of six 0.8 calibre players, the sum value of their group is more than 0.8 x6 = 4.8. How much more depends on the quality of the premade... there are a lot of factors that determine what makes a good premade. There are different levels of communication, class setups, organization, leadership, none of which are part of an individual player's skill, but make a difference to the finally quality of the group.
Lets say alone the individuals are of 0.8 quality. However, the group could have a total quality of just over 12, i.e capable of defeated 24 unorganized players of 0.5 quality. If you divide 12/6 you get 2. A value of 2 per person of the premade. Remember 1 point is a perfect player, so by being in a premade, the individuals are outputting double what a perfect player playing alone does.
Any time you modify the numbers you get a similar result...which is that a
good group greatly magnifies the output per person of its members and is greater than the sum of its parts. Not all groups are good. If you invite randoms into a party with a 2-2-2 setup and you just run off and dont communicate or guard or assist or use party buffs that total group value won't be much more than what those players are worth individually. But regardless, therein lies the answer to why premades are sought after by the highest quality of players... it is the setup that offers the best magnification of individual output, aka skill.
To answer your questions directly... you don't need even numbers to identify "skill". The biggest indicator is the quality times number of opponents you can defeat, divided by the number of friendly players it took to do so.
Scenarios are and are not balanced. They are balanced in the sense that each team has the same number of players on each side and each player has the same group of tools to maximize their contribution. They are not balanced in the sense that there is such a large gap between the values of 6x average player and a coordinated premade. I.E 6-man groups of total values of something high like 6-12 are fighting against groups of total value of 2-3... 3x or 4x their match. The opportunity is balanced, the level of skill is not.
This leads to scs that are so imbalanced the losing side just want to quit and the winning side gets bored and want it to end fast. No fun for anybody. What is the solution? Some people are suggesting removing 6-mans from scs. This would reduce the range of group outputs possible to obtain. My suggestion is to only allow 6-mans in scs.
Which do you think will lead to more fun...
-a slightly longer wait/effort to get a game but near guaranteed chance to join with a 2-2-2 and fight against another 2-2-2 OR
-a quicker pop with no pre-effort but whether the sc is balanced is largely down to which side was luckier enough to get the more balanced group.
Ideally, anyone who wants to sc calls on chat looking for a group.. you fill up your 2-2-2 (or something different if you dare) group and you go into the sc knowing who the main assist is, always having a healer, always having guard, and so on. They'd all be much more balanced and the level of fun would be much greater for everybody. Groups will still get stomped sure, but I can guarantee it would happen less than now.