…and how to resolve it. Sole biggest issue with RSS design is the MMR/rating system tied to it and the way of player interaction:
- you play 6 rounds with the SAME people. This creates obvious pits to the rounds, such as a weak link making both heals go 3/3, or one character playing like god in one round basically afk/target dummy the next or vica versa.
- since you play with the same 6 people throughout, a bad lobby puts you into 6 miserable rounds.
- since you play with the same people, there is a level of on-the-fly improvements that lead to eventual 4-2’s for some instead of 3-3. Otherwise, the lobby is put together people bound to be 3-3, as far as MMR goes.
- on-the-fly learning/warming up makes the first 2-3 rounds a learning ground for the lobby. This is also where the outcomes are mostly decided.
- lastly, going 3-3 doesn’t win you anything. As far as how players interact with this game mode and how does it feel, going 3-3 is an absolute win. However, this is not how the system sees it - for the system, 3-3 is 3 win 3 lose hence back where you started from. This is not correct when you got to play these 6 rounds with the SAME people just shuffled around.
So in short, this game mode puts you into a lobby with 5 supposedly equally skilled players and expects you to go home with 4-5-6 (rather 5-6 as often even 4 doesn’t win you anything) to “win”. This is a just system unfortunately (3 win - 3 lose should put you back roughly where you started from indeed), but this is not how the players interact with this game mode and is not how it feels it should work.
This game mode instead may look like as follows:
- 3 rounds of games. Same group throughout; no shuffling around. First 2 is a warm-up game to get used to each other, last round is the real deal.
- rating adds up from the 3 games: first two rounds count as half-half win, last round counts as full win (2 wins total). E.g you’d get let’s say 12 rating for one arena win. If you win all 3 rounds, you get 6+6+12=24 rating. Win-lose-win, you get 12. Lose-lose-win is 0 rating. Loose all 3 you loose 24 rating. MMR may adjust the gains with 1-2 rating so e.g a lose-lose-win may still result you a few cr gain. Overall even if it is a total loss, you don’t loose 50-60 rating.
- on composition side: the same as current I think that part - sometimes unlucky, but - works. Perhaps make “preferred comps”, e.g make the system try to put together a lobby where your class interfaces well with the partner(s). This means a wide range of possibilities. Randomness in the lobby and comp may hit in when the queue time is long like 15+ min or so.
- 3 rounds instead of 6 halves the round time hence more control to climb in CR/MMR and chance to get queued in with other people on that level.
Roughly this is the idea.