Demigod brain storming

By Frogboy on May 24, 2009 7:51:56 PM from

It’s hard to believe, given everything Demigod has been through, that it’s only been available for about a month!

This week we’ll be putting the first significant update to Demigod through QA to see if we can get it out this week. v1.01 has all kinds of improvements to make the experience AFTER you get into a game much better.

But there’s some things we’re going to be looking at doing to improve the online experience before you get into a game.

Here are some examples:

2. We’d like to display the skill rating right in the connection dialog. This will take a bit of doing on our part but I think it’s worth doing. That way, you get into a game where it’s 4 buddies ready to keep crushing 4 random guys and you can see what you’re getting yourself into. It will encourage much more even games. Few people like an imbalanced game experience.

3. Net connection quality. Games usually just display ping. But ping isn’t enough. As we’ve seen from the Speedtest thread there are a surprising number of users who have incredibly poor connections (think barely better than 56k modem). Some DSLs have 1megabit downstream but less than 150kilobit upstream. There’s no way that person is going to have a good experience in a 5 on 5 game. And they’ll bring down everyone else. So we need to find a way to calculate that and display it.

4. Karma. Okay, this is a controversial thing to have so we’d love to hear from you guys on the best way to find out if a particular user is a griefer. No system is perfect but I am sure we can think of a way to make it so that people can do something about that.

Connection info in game

Another thing we’d like to do is have a way to easily make people in your games friends so you can grab them later. We’ll be doing a lot of things in the coming months with the friends system. We hadn’t originally intended to deploy the Impulse friends system in Demigod at all as it was being designed as an Impulse Phase 4 feature but it became apparent in beta that we needed some way for people to interact. So you’ll see that sort of thing evolve a lot going forward.

+912 Karma | 116 Replies

Here is why a karma system would never work

in another thread frogboy explains how it could work:

The solution in my mind won't come until probably this Summer with the next phase of Impulse where people will be able to have a lot more control over the types of players they get set up with.

The problem right now is that you get matched up with people based purely on skill (in skirmish / pantheon). What is needed, IMO, are ways to rate other players in game.

Basically a karma system. A player can rate a player +1 or -1. When doing matchmaking, players with higher karma will get matched up quicker than players with lower karma. In addition, the system could look at how often someone gives out karma and take that into account as well (i.e. if someone gives a person -1 every time they lose the system could take that into account).

the karma system imo, is ment to be for individual players only. it shouldnt be shared.

Dalkz, you of all people know that I can only comment on things that we have control over. Overservers, Replays, are all things we've requested to Gas Powered Games but it's ultimately their call.

By contrast, the features I mention here are things Stardock can do.

Ah yes, I forgot that this is GPG's job, not yours - my bad

Karma, totally needed but yeah very hard to get a system that can't be abused. Maybe start looking at Ebay and it's rating system. Baiscly find another system that totally works and copy it or make it better.

All the new information displayed sounds cool (connection, skill, etc) looking foward to it.

More robust friends list (easy adding, inviting people from your friends list to games, having a list of people you've recently played against so you can easly add them to your friends list, etc). All good stuff!

After playing this weekend one of the things that feels wierd to me with demigod is the lack of chat lobbies! Having to wait till I connect to everyone before we can start talking and this is the reverse to what other games do (War3, CoH, DoW1, SC, etc).

In other games first you connect to a chat lobby (global) and then you get a list of custom games. You can click to join a game and while you do, you can still chat int he global lobby. Once you've joined a local game you can then chat in the local game or global lobby. But at all times, you can chat and communicate with players. This makes the game feel like a community (and the chat lobbies list all the players in them).

Once in a local game lobby while players are talking and setting up it should attempt connections. Then you launch the game assuming everyone connects to everyone.

In the current system it really feels like I'm out in the dark for a long time till the game finally connects me up.

-Jara

PS: Granted this is a non-issue for Skirmish/pantheon games (and if team lobbies + auto match was implimented) than it would not even be an issue either.

Play on dota-league and see thier system of feedback. Its mandatory that every player fill in a report on the game including who won, who left and (optionally) the host connection quality. If theres a dispute about the results then a replay is uploaded and an admin checks it and gives penalty points to poeple who put wrong results.

This obviously involves a lot of manpower and architecture but it works. I would rather have no system than a half baked one.

I'm kind of going to have to agree with wtnind on this one. If you're going to put a system like this into pantheon, it has to be real good. Otherwise people can stack up bad karma against high skill enemies, or kick players because they're a threat (you think you want high ratings everywhere? think again...).

Great ideas man; some more ideas /suggestions:

1) Please DO NOT give users the ability to modify karma or we will see exploits and imature behavior!

Idea: Karma drops when someone rage quits and Karma raises when someone plays till the end even though he lost.

2) Integrate experience - if experience/web stats get fixed you can show it as 'skill'

3) Make filters - allow host to specify an experience range. eg he wants to play only with ppl bellow 1000 experience (n00bs).

4) Allow me to BUZZ friends (like in yahoo) or make an alert when a friend sends a message; Often they don't even see that I wrote to them

Frogboy is there any chance of getting a working pause button in for single player. It is kind of hard to goto the bathroom when you can't pause the game lol.

The connection dialog should be open by default and have a more robust layout. Including the stuff you labeled on the screenshot it should also have a progress type bar for network status. So people no if it is trying to do a nat punch through, direct connection or proxy connection. A lot of the time people leave because it "takes to long" seeing some type of feedback might make a few more stay.

Quoting DarthAsh,

reply 7

Frogboy is there any chance of getting a working pause button in for single player. It is kind of hard to goto the bathroom when you can't pause the game lol.

Just set the timeout option in the game options and you can take a bath as often as you like

Perhaps some Trust Metrics can be used to implement a Karma system

This metrics, used in Google-rank or in Advogato, try to issue exploits and attacks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric

Quoting Archon Saar,

reply 6

Great ideas man; some more ideas /suggestions:

1) Please DO NOT give users the ability to modify karma or we will see exploits and imature behavior!

This coming from a person who calls people n00bs for saying Zikurat is a 5v5 player map and suggesting a map change, and then proceeds to kick them out of the game in under 5 seconds? Yes, for people like you we definitely need a karma system.

ability to give 1 karma from 1 account to other once a week or month etc should lower the abuse value

i like karma

I'd love to see 1-3 but Karma is a bad idea.

I'd rather go with the simple Prefer/Avoid you see on Xbox Live.

I think it might be an idea to multiply karma up by the length of the game. So if someone quits early, it's a bit irritating but you haven't wasted much time and can find another game. If someone quits mid-way because they're losing, that's pretty crappy. Similarly, if someone sticks it out for a really long game, good on them.

This would also make exploiting the system by completing lots of really quick games more difficult.

Though I've been incredibly critical of SD and directed that at Frogboy lately, that sounds like a good, rational list of things to get through.

Connection info, simspeed and upstream data on all players will certainly alleviate a lot of problems in matchmaking and custom games.

Still hungering for arranged-team matchups and a functional pantheon. Accurate, permanent record = /drool

like it tho.

Naz

Performance and skill ratings are a good idea. As for karma:

Quoting Ceylin,

reply 22

-1 Karma for leaving the game early

+1 Karma for winning a game

+3 Karma for losing a game.

Really, what you need to do is reward players for sticking it out. Can't just award completed games, because most people will stay in for a game they're winning, thats not really all that impressive. Most people you'd want to play with will stick it through no matter what.

Also though, the biggest way to fix this is to have a rating system. That way even if they do rage-quit, your rating gets better. This will matter much more though when there are clan wars. Right now, with random teams its too easy to screw someone over.

Simple and deals with the major problem many people are dealing with now. However, as far as I know it isn't possible to discriminate between an early leaver and someone that's been disconnected.

Net connection quality is a good measure to have, especially in custom games. I was wondering if there are plans to accomodate people with slower upstream bandwidths in the matchmaking system. After all, the minimum requirements of Demigod simply state "Broadband Connection for Internet Multiplayer" and technically 384kbps down/128kbps up is broadband.

I'm thinking a system that ensures people with slow connections like that only get matched in 2v2s?

quoting post

1. We’d like to have the connection information dialog also display a performance rating. This is an issue that people are familiar with all the way back to the Total Annihilation and Starcraft days.
2. We’d like to display the skill rating right in the connection dialog. This will take a bit of doing on our part but I think it’s worth doing. That way, you get into a game where it’s 4 buddies ready to keep crushing 4 random guys and you can see what you’re getting yourself into. It will encourage much more even games. Few people like an imbalanced game experience.
3. Net connection quality. Games usually just display ping. But ping isn’t enough. As we’ve seen from the Speedtest thread there are a surprising number of users who have incredibly poor connections (think barely better than 56k modem). Some DSLs have 1megabit downstream but less than 150kilobit upstream. There’s no way that person is going to have a good experience in a 5 on 5 game. And they’ll bring down everyone else. So we need to find a way to calculate that and display it.
4. Karma. Okay, this is a controversial thing to have so we’d love to hear from you guys on the best way to find out if a particular user is a griefer. No system is perfect but I am sure we can think of a way to make it so that people can do something about that.

1. Thank god, nothing worse than playing with someone who can barley run the game, and when a lot of stuff starts going on the screen your game turns into a slideshow.

2. How is a person’s skill rating going to be determined ?

3. This would be very useful. Could Stardock maybe build in a required network speed test into the impulse client for demigod (and or other games). Would be a onetime thing, unless of course someone changed their Cable/DSL package, and wanted to update their connection quality stat. Doing this would also be very useful for all of Stardocks other online multiplayer games.

4. Karma, Hrmm. No single player should have the ability to reduce someone’s Karma. Beyond that I can’t really think of a good system, except for players of the game to be able to call a vote to issue a negative Karma request on the quitting player. If that player receives enough Negative Karma requests their Karma rating is lowered. Only 1 request per game can be issued, so it would take multiple games to actually reduce a players Karma…. The Karma hit would have to be fairly high, depending on how positive Karma is awarded.

(I’m sure this is a GPG related want) One thing I would also like to see, is allow the host the ability to hide the demigods they are picking from the opposing team. Surprises are fun. It would also be nice that when a person chooses to play Pantheon or Skirmish, they are given the option to select what type of team game they wish to play. 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, ect. I really enjoy Pantheon 2v2’s, and would like to be able to click Pantheon, choose my god, then select 2v2 match, and get other people seeking the same, instead of being forced to something more.

Oh, and something needs to be done about when a host quits the game, the game does not show up in your games lists. Even in Pantheon someone gets designated as the host... and when they quit, that game does not count towards your stats.

Karma is a waste of time , they have it in other games but no one cares. All they care about is your skill. The higher your skill the more they want you on their team. Also karma is a morality thing, not wanting to play with someone and leaving early or crashing,etc should not open you up to internet moral judgement. This will inaccurate and piss players off when they are at the mercy of their often lazy quick to judge peers.

Another issues called stacking: when all the high skill people want to be on one team after joining a random game.

players will see your skill and want to join you, no one will want to be on the opposing side. Also no skilled player wants to play with an unskilled player if they can tell the difference.

Skill should not be shown in game or it will make it harder to get games started. While skill could be in the background helping to make balanced games its not a good idea for people to see each others skill. If they are that interested they can look it up on the website.

Here are three ways I think could make the Karma system good.

1. Only your teammates can give Karma. This prevents losers griefing.

2. You can only be given positive Karma. Having negative karma is not really a good idea, because people will far more often lower karma than increase it (even the forums don't have negative Karma!)

3. Combined with either 1 or 2: Give a proper concede option and a "leave game" option that doesn't make eveyrbody wait for 30 seconds and screw stat storage. Seriously, if we could just have a concede button, things would be lovely.

I thought this was a good idea...

If anyone wishes to concede, they go ahead and the concede button wherever it may be. However, nothing will happen at first. The rest of your team has to also concede. After everyone has done so, your team is offically declared the loser and the oppoisng team the winner.

I don't think Karma would be very useful... even if only your teammate can give Karma, then some griefers will -1 every teammate when they lose. Think the people who shout at you and blame you for losing a game. While only being able to give positive karma would be very effective against griefers, then the question turns out to be, why implement it in the first place? You won't be able to tell the difference between a new player or a player with bad conduct.

But yes, concede! Should be #1!

Quoting Ceylin,

reply 22

Bad idea, +3 for losing? How about no additions, because the system is bad for new players who don't have any karma yet. Maybe there should be three basic rankings; Easy-Going, Moderate, Rage. If and when Stardock is able to distinguish between a disconnect and ragequit, people will get "Rage" for quiting a lot, "Moderate" for sticking out full games and quitting evenly, and "Easy-Going" for a nice Stay:Quit ratio. All players would start on moderate, and go up or down based on whether they play full the whole game or not. A disconnect would not be considered in the same category as a ragequit, so disco's would not count for or against you, it would be as though you never played if you disco.

This rank could be listed when the player gets into the lobby next to their name or something. Then custom games would have "3v3 US No Rage." Obviously they would still be able to play pantheon and skirmish. These people could redeem themselves if they stick it out the whole way through pantheons and skirmishes, and therefore go back to Moderate level.

This system would ensure that players only ragequit when it really is necessary, although in my opinion its never necessary.

Perhaps some Trust Metrics can be used to implement a Karma system

This metrics, used in Google-rank or in Advogato, try to issue exploits and attacks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric

Thank you, Elnopintan, for stealing the thoughts right out of my mind! But I'll amplify a bit for the sake of the readership.

As I see it, what I've been wanting in a game system is not a tool that tells me what the community thinks of someone, but what I'm likely to think of someone. The community as a whole very well may be moving in a direction I don't enjoy: over-competitive (or under), obsessed with certain behaviours or avoiding certain tactics, whatever. I don't care about them. What I do care about is rating folks after a game based on my involvement / fun / approval and then having the system take my opinion as paramount and the opinion of my Friends / folks I've ranked highly, and then extrapolatively rank folks as I might based on my historical tastes and what people I consider meaningful to me (ie. those I had fun with) rated them.

In a system like this, "gaming the system" is very, very difficult. A Web of Trust matrix exists as a set of connections, so if me and my friends enjoy playing together, we'll be mutually rating each other highly. Doesm't matter to the rest of the matrix, we can be perfectly happy doing so. If one of my friends ventures out of the group bubble of ratings and ranks someone he found in a pick-up game well, then the web links up, and a friend of a friend'll be rated somewhat more favourably (or poorly if its a negative rating!). This lets people get more of what they want and less of what they don't, and that's a total plus.

Automated ratings based on karma from "completed / won / lost" games are a wholly orthagonal issue. I'd rather play with someone who may have disconnected 5 of his last 10 games (due to network ick, maybe, or whatnot) that my friends consider a good rating than a guy that rides every game out to the bitter end but is a complete douche to game with or who exploits every tiny exploitable ever. That is the kind of information I need.

Mechanically, all it'd take is a post-game thumbs-up, thumbs-down or "do nothing" button next to everyone's name. You don't have to rate anyone, but you can. And that data goes into the database, and when a new person appears in front of you, walk the web and see what trust level they possess. (It's usually implimented as some kind of spreading activation network but any kind of digraph would do just fine ...)

There's a web-link sharing implimentation of something very like over at Jaanix. I'm sure if there were any questions about underlying collaborative filtering algorithms, Joe'd be happy to help.

sounds like good stuff

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Demigod brain storming