Friends!
We often see your questions gathering a lot of likes and support from the community. We always do try to answer as fully as possible, but comments are a place where the answers get lost easily. Therefore, today we are reviving a long-forgotten rubric - Developers answer!
In today's first issue, we are going to discuss one of the most frequently asked, popular and interesting questions - about matchmaking, the punishment system and a little bit about the maintenance works process.
We would like to point out that the matchmaking system does count a lot of parameters in while trying to create a team where all of the players are as equal in skills and rating as possible, so that a player does feel comfortable inside his own team and does not encounter an unbeatable opponent. However, if the search takes too much time, the matchmaking frame goes blurry, and some of the parametres soften and the search broadens - just to make it faster.
Let us see which parameters are counted in by our system while trying to match 2 teams.
Hero's rating
Matchmaking within 1800 rating or less is working strictly within one rank. For example, a Hero with 1410 rating will be fighting with and against Heroes with 1400-1499 rating.
There is an exception though - premade groups. Such groups' rating is counted by the top number of rating points its members have. For example, if there are 3 players in the team with 1400, 1450 and 1500 rating, the matchmaking system will match this group with players who have 1500-1599 rating.
Average Team Power
The matchmaking system (MMS in further text) tries its best to balance the teams basing on average Power. For example, in a team where members have 1700, 1800,1800, 1900 and 1700 Power, their average Power will be 1780. Yet the distribution of the average rating can be different within different teams. For example, the Heroes from the second team can have 2000, 1600, 1700, 1800, 1800 Power.
Teams are being selected by their average power, since the MOBA genre, which Prime World belongs to, is a teamplay genre and is directed primarily to playing in a team.
Hero's maximum rating
HMR is Hero's maximum rating he reached within the last 30 days.
As an example: a player had won a battle in the Borderlands with a Hero who had 1800 rating - this would be HMR for the 30 days to come. To increase his HMR, he needs to win a battle playing any Hero whose rating will be higher than 1800. HMR can be raised any time you wish. HMR will drop down automatically after 30 days pass from the moment you won a battle with a Hero whose rating was the maximum one in a 30 day period.
MMS also counts this parameter in and tries to equalize the teams by 2 parametres (where HMR is taken into consideration):
- by sums of the maximum ratings between the teams, trying to make them as close to each other as possible;
- by making the difference in the maximum ratings within the team members as little as possible.
You can learn more about HMR in this post.
Hero's role
MMS also counts how effective is the player in each role the game has to offer.
The system counts in 6 roles performance statistics: the already familiar Protector, Fighter, Slayer, Support, Vanguard and a specially dedicated role of the Jungler. At the same time, the same Hero often corresponds to several indicators at once - but, of course, with different efficiency.
Let us show you how do the efficiency points are distributed among some of the Heroes as an example:
In MMS there are efficiency intervals set for the team roles, which must be matched by the Heroes selected.
For example, the number of points for the role of a Defender should be equal to 1 per team, but the number of points for the role of an Assassin can range from 0 to 3 points per team in total.
Therefore, MMS tries to gather counterbalanced in roles teams. However, the more time passes by from the beginning of the search, the less strict the sum of points per roles the teams must fit in becomes.
Let us explain you how does the system works as a whole.
A player can report another player in the battle or in his Castle. The number of reports you can send is limited to prevent the system's abuse and bans of people who simply did not fall into someone's liking. Battle reports are being refreshed every battle, yet the number of reports you can send from the Castle take 24 hours to be renewed. At the same time, you can send 2 reports at a time in battle and 3 reports at a time in the Castle.
All the reports sent and received are stored in the player's history and are registered in real time. Every report, which goes to the special storage, brings a lot of information to us, which is needed to understand the situation and make a decision if the report was reasonable or not. This information includes - chat logs, battle logs and information about the player's activity as a whole - how much Prime did he gather in battle, what is his KDA (kills, deaths and assists) ratio and etc. The whole list of information we receive is not going to be posted anywhere to prevent the temptation to fool the system :)
After the number of reports a player received reaches a certain number, he is being marked in a special way. This mark tells us that the player had received a lot of reports and we have to decide how to punish him. Our GMs are taking a good look at every case a few times a week.
After the reports are being viewed, the decision is being made - if the person violated the rules of the game enough times to get a ban, or some of the reports are not justified and the player receives an indulgence.
If the player receives a ban, it means that he has collected enough justified reports. We also wish to point out that if you believe that it is not you who have ruined the game but your teammate, who has not given you mid (and you've warned him with "mid or feed" message) - you are terribly wrong.
After the player receives a ban or "forgiveness", all the reports he got before burn away and do not count in in the future. However, the story of punishments is attached to the player till the end of times and is always taken into consideration if it comes to the next ban cases.
We are rarely looking at screenshots or videos as a reason for providing a ban, since they do not carry enough information to us.
Whatever it seems from the outside, technical works are a long and time-consuming process in reality. They are changing the heart of the game - its server infrastructure.
In order for you to download the game or the update itself (whatever is weights), it is necessary for us to tell the servers that something has changed, at it requires an update. Even a simple PC reboot takes time, just imagine how much time does a server need!
What is more, we take deep care of your accounts and the game process, so we store their copies in a safe place so that nothing gets lost! And this also takes time. For example, try to copy a few terabytes to another storage - and enjoy the wait while the machines are doing their thing... :)
And, of course, after the server part of the maintenance works ends, the ones who take over the baton are our testers. On closed for players servers they test the basic mechanics of the game - account login, matchmaking, binding talents and so on.
Therefore, even a planned server reboot needed to keep the game running smooth and stable can take a lot of time.
If you want to ask your question and read an answer on Prime World official site - please write it in our special form. The most interesting, actual and frequently asked questions will be posted with answers in news posts like this one.
See you soon!
Prime World Development Team