ANet's stance on syncing

Sure, but the wait could likely increase for some people not being assigned to any of the teams in the batch ready to start.

This will not affect the average time necessary to get a match by much.

It will increase the variance in your wait times. In RA, you would hardly notice the change. Players in FA and AB would notice that sometimes they match immediately and sometimes wait much longer than normal.

Then add a counter:

When Timer Reset <= 3, "Priviledged".

Priviledged here meaning you WILL get placed on the next reset. Easy doable, can not be abused as you can not choose to get a reset, and makes sure you have no more than 3 resets.

This could do, some form of priority in the queue.

That was not the point, which was that true randomness will mean that sometimes people will have to wait much longer.

Random does not take into account that a player was not selected for the previous batch of teams, nor will it take into account that they weren't in the teams before that, or those before that. If you pick completely randomly, there will be people who are going to have to wait very long.

That might work, even though some form of non-randomness returns, I don't see how syncing would be workable.

Which I acknowledged. Look up what "variance" means.

But does it matter? Just because the claim is true does not mean that the effects are meaningful.

That would be a disaster in arenas like FA and AB where people already have long waits. Eventually, it would be a disaster in RA as well once the player base becomes small enough.

Lemming's solution is better without this modification than with.

Why? I really don't see why it's a "disaster"? How will this make it slower for anyone? We're assuming the same amount of teams are forming per given time unit, so the same amount of people are going in.

I really don't know if you don't understand my suggestion, or you don't understand the idea behind it.

All this would do is that when people got "unlucky" for 3 timers (3 resets), is give them priority over other people. This can in no way get abused, even when the playerbase is low. It also wouldn't make anything slower is disastrous because if the player base is so low you can't form matches, you won't be able to form them no matter how you select people.

Again, I really don't understand what the issue with this is, elaborate?

A lot of times, it already takes 10+ timers to get a match in FA/AB.

Uninformed players that don't understand the system will not be able to get a match if we switch things to the system you propose. Things would remain the same for you and me, because we would know to cancel after three timers and restart, but it would wreck the casual player.

If you meant >= 3, you should edit the above post.

Guess that's it: he is suggesting some prioritization for players not being assigned to any random team for three times in a row or more, so that they can at least be sure to be in after the fourth timer has expired.

Yeah, meant >=3, srry typed brain worked faster than my fingers there.

Ok, fully my bad, you had a valid point, and I eff'd up. I meant >=3

If that's the case, then it's a good addition to Lemming's proposal. While it doesn't fix the problems the proposal introduces, it minimizes them - especially in the current RA.

I'd support that change.

Why don't you look up what "getting bored waiting and doing something else" means. I've read your post and concluded from it that you did not understand the effect it might have on people. Waiting too long is a negative personal experience - possible resulting in players moving to another game. The term 'variance' does not cover the actual meaning and effect of waiting too long.

Does it matter? Do people matter? Or how they percieve the game. How long will they wait before they go do something else.

I don't think you get how my suggestion works.

I think he understands how the suggestion works just fine.

I just think he gets a little emotionally upset about the possibility that players might have to wait a bunch of timers to match every so often. Of course, that happens in plenty of formats already.

Never mind that the number of timers players wait would be reduced on a regular basis as well. Sure, the mean number of timers you wait would increase a bit. Just not enough to matter.

He's just being stereotypically American.

Hey not all americans want everything this instant! Some of us like to wait a few seconds for stuff...sometimes

Why is everyone of your posts decorated with that personal touch that is sometimes referred to as flamebait? Is there a reaction you are trying to get?

It don't work that way, you're dealing with people, they're not going to keep notes on the waiting times and work out the average. They're just gonna be annoyed when they have to wait too long.

I understand it just fine, you just seem to not quite understand what random means.

Please look at the suggested modification and try to figure out why just about everyone thinks that might be a huge improvement to your idea.

The problem with Lemming's suggestion is that's how the game currently works. Modes are still syncable because there's that few people joining in the 30 second window anymore.

Possible exception for people joining in the T-2 seconds window. That's a loophole people have been using to increase sync chances in the merged district era and should be looked into. People joining in that time frame should just get a NOP and be grouped in the next 30-second go. Upping the wait to 1 minute might also help.

@ FoxBat: Go get four or five players and sync an 8-man format such as JQ or FA. It will quickly become obvious that it's filling in order from the queue. When you land a full sync, you will be adjacent. When you are split, you will repeatedly be split into the same places in the party.

I've agreed with you on the facts from the start, which you don't seem to comprehend. We're disagreeing about the implications.

Suppose that 49 people click "Enter Battle" every RA timer. That means that players get left out in the cold for four cycles.

The odds of requiring four consecutive match timers to match would be 1/49 * 1/25 * 3/51 = 1/20825. The odds of needing three timers (given the assumptions) are 1/1225.

You'll hardly feel the change. Once in a very great while, you'll have to wait a while to get a match. If you're incredibly unlucky, it might be a very long time. But you're highly unlikely to have two long waits in the same week or month.

If you still think that's a big deal, then you really are being stereotypically American in your impatience. If you're a heavy RA player, you'll lose a few minutes of your life every month to match timers. But you'll almost certainly earn more than enough points to compensate unless you're currently syncing.

That's all fine, I have no problem with open discussion, but I am fed up with your childish, personal additions towards me. Please grow up.

Where are your numbers coming from? Do you have access to ANet's data? How many players press 'Enter Battle' every 30 seconds, how many teams are formed? With those data you can calculate what the chances are of getting in, or not getting in a team.

Do you realize with the amount of players pressing 'enter battle' and the time-span we're dealing with, 1:1000 is a pretty big chance

Without the data it's guessing. But consider this, why would ANet not have randomized it long before and in stead chosen a selection algorithm that apparantly makes syncing possible?

There you go again, "if you think Y then you must be X. When will you grow up and start discussing issues rather then calling people names when they disagree with you.

Btw, how old are you?

But we don't have it, so in the absence of that, we do the best thing we can: speculate. The best approach, given the absence of data, is to make some reasonable assumptions about the math problem we are facing and infer the likely consequences of a change in the pairing mechanism from those assumptions.

The assumptions I made are useful because they force the possibility of long timer waits, and give us some idea of the possible odds of drawing a long wait given the join system we're facing.

Am I claiming accuracy? Of course not. But with this problem, the set of possible outcomes is pretty limited. What we can do is make reasonable, realistic assumptions about the problem and extrapolate probabilities about the risks of experiencing the issue you are so concerned about, the risk of drawing a lengthy series of timers in order to get a match.

Older than you.

As I see it, we have two issues here:

1) You've been repeatedly, objectively wrong in your claims about what I've said. To be frank, I don't have to treat you with respect when you mischaracterize my statements. In intellectual discourse, that's disrespectful. Play nice, and I'll play nice back. Distort the truth, and the gloves come off.

2) You're focusing on extremely low probability events rather than on the net social result. We have a problem where players are behaving in a socially undesirable fashion because the system incentivizes the behavior. Lemming's proposal reduces those incentives. That proposal does not come without cost, but the social costs are objectively, demonstrably negligible if you accept the supposition that we should measure net social benefit as a fair distribution of glad points and Balth faction. Since that's always what people are on about when they raise the issue of syncing, I think that's a pretty fair supposition.

Permutating the assumptions I made admits the possibility of longer timer waits, but the chances of such waits are so negligible (much less ever experiencing multiple such waits) that they aren't really worth our consideration when trying to solve this problem of social choice.

The average player that doesn't sync is demonstrably better off under Lemming's regime given any set of assumptions you care to propose. Further, the odds of any given player being worse off given Lemming's regime are so remote (irrespective of the assumptions) that it's pretty clear that the proposal is socially improving, even given the risk of long match timers.

It's not that you haven't raised a valid point. It's just that it's irrelevant. In essence, you're complaining that injecting an insulin-dependent diabetic results in a wound that could become infected. While the statement is true, it's pretty evident that the diabetic is better off if given the insulin despite the risks.

Perhaps the issue is that you reject the definition of net social benefit that I put on the table. If your preferences are such that you'd rather get thrashed by g9+ syncs that don't suck, rather than ever experience a timer reset, I can't argue with that. But what I'm trying to point out to you is that those preferences probably aren't consistent with the player base in general. The existence of this thread tends to confirm the supposition I made; players' responses in the thread provide further evidence.

This.

As usual on these forums, we're just guessing and playing the developer, throwing assumptions and pretending we know how the game actually works and what the priorities during the development process were.

Developers sure know better than us what's the best solution: likely the devteam thinks it's better to allow some (admitedly difficult) syncing than implementing 100% randomization, increasing the wait times for everyone in the queue.

I'd agree with you if it weren't mathematically demonstrable that the average increase in wait times would be minimal.

The change in average expected timer wait (given the above assumptions with existing winners pairing off) is given by something less than 1/1225 + 1/20825 ~= 0.0008+0.000048 = 0.000848. So if your average wait is now 1.1, then your new average wait is less than 1.100848. (Yes, I'm being a bit lazy with prob/stat.)

(Note that the expected chance of drawing a single NOP does not vary.)

The effect is negligible. You can inflate the chances a bit by playing with the assumptions, but you're not getting the expected number of timers up to 1.11 with anything that remotely reflects current activity.

If RA became horribly inactive, I think that the worst case scenario in terms of differential approaches 0.5. I'd have to go grab a math book, pencil and paper to solve the infinite series case, though. Social choice deals with the finite more often than not, so I can't do it in my head.

Lost the thread right here.

If the devs knew better then us:

Factions wouldn't have happened.
Nightfall wouldn't have happened.
VoD wouldn't have happened.
Redicilous buffs wouldn't have happened.
PvP crumbling woudn't have happened to this redicilous extend.
Complete split between PvP and PvE wouldn't have happened.


And so much more. The reason why RA hasn't been fix'ed yet simply is because they don't know any better. Lemming's suggestion combined with my "fix" would solve every form of RA syncing, would in no way be abusable (UNLESS you're the only team going in, but then there simply is not a single thing you can do to prevent this.)

You wouldn't have insane long wait times, I really have no clue what you're talking about. What are the odds of waiting longer than 120 seconds (3 resets): 0 or next to 0%. Why? Because the second you hit the third reset, the game will put you on a priority list, exactly how RA works now, (spot nr 1) and unless the game doesn't find 3 other players for you to team up with, you'll always go in on the 4th try. And if you don't, that's solely because the format is inactive, and not because the suggested solution sucks.

Or maybe you can post here how exactly the game is supposed to form a 4 man team when there's only 1 person (in the intire game) waiting in RA to go in.

Really? People are getting way too overconfident here. Lemming's solution is so obvious that I though it was how the current team formation worked at first.

Do you really think Anet is so inept they couldn't think of it by themselves?

Do YOU really think you know better than people working full time on their games, who most of the time have a significant experience in the field? Have you ever thought that MAYBE they've evaluated multiple possibilities and discarded this one for some issues you don't know - like, difficult implementation, side effects, or whatever?

It's not you nor me to judge wether their priorities and their motivations behind prefereces are right or wrong.

That's if there some form of prioritization as you're suggesting - while Martin thinks it useless. Otherwise, you could spend a whole day waiting for the random algorithm to pick YOU up among thousands of players in the queue.

Yes, that's theoratically possible. It's also possible you get hit by a meteor the next time you take a walk outside. (Doesn't even have to be outside lulz)

For that to happen, you'e assuming alot of things. Too much to mention, but pretty much that you're always part of the few people (<7) who never gets formed up.

And we don't know the exact numbers, but if there's 40 people going in, which seems a very reasonable amount given the amount of people in the many districts, the chances are less than 1%. (As Martin pointed out)

Sure, I'm assuming, like everyone in this thread, not to mention the numbers in your last post.

Reconnects.
What are the odds that you're going to be shafted more than once or twice in a queue of thousands?

Depends on how many teams are formed every given time interval.

If the number is low, the odds are fairly high, expecially since the cue is open-ended and still allows more people to click the Enter button and join the queue any time. Unless you process it in order, you have no certainty at all that you'll ever be picked up. Some prioritization system is necessary.

theres a reason why developers hire play testers (i.e. test krewe)

theres a great amount of understanding one can obtain through playing a game that one cannot obtain by developing it. you talk about experience--collectively the players have way more playing experience than the devs do; many decisions the devs make are based on (limited) analysis and theorycrafting.

Let's say that at zero seconds on the countdown, there's 101 people in the queue and that no team currently in RA had a member leave.

The chance that you're the one guy left over is 1/101.

That somewhat depends on the size of the batch that is dequeued every period.

If you're saying that each (30 second) period teams are formed until there aren't enough players left for a match then there would be no problem with syncing, provided assignment of players to teams is random - and I don't see why that wouldn't be the case. Otoh, if, like foxbat claims, there aren't enough players to distribute syncers over different teams, so it looks like the 101 would rather be something like 20, or less.

Do you have a method that allows calculating the chance of a long wait without knowing anything about how many players are queued or how many arena's are available every period? How can you claim such chances are negligible without data?

The change, if any, in average waiting time is not the expected problem, but the occurence of the more extreme waiting times that might cause players to leave. Which is something to take into account.

The 'priority queue' introduced earlier seems to address both issues.


You have been disrespectfull towards me from your very first reaction on me. Your first reaction to me, this

is where you added a personal touch and there was really no need for that. Now, where did I "mischaracterize" your statements? Don't ramble about 'respect' or 'playing nice' when you started the bickering but stop pretending you didn't.

You talk about theorycrafting and forget that this whole thread is based on assumptions an empirical observations. Also experience is not to be considered collectively.

You also seem to forget that the player's needs are not the only ones to be taken into account. Reworking algorithms is a tricky process. Suggestions made here might look perfectly fine and logical from the player's point of view, but still they're not for the developer. I wouldn't be surprised to get a reply such as "This solution was cheaper and quicker to develop given the limited resources we have at our disposal". From the player's point of view, the solution implemented is an obvious improvement but still it's not optimal, but the developer is fine with it and won't bother going further. It's called compromise, which is a pretty common practice in every development process.

So, that's around 1%, which is fairly high, considering that the number of players in the queue is dynamic and likely much higher. That one guy has no certainty to be in the next batch unless you process the queue in order or shift him to be high-prioritized for the next batch.

Assuming an even rate of players joining the queue, you have a better chance of winning a lottery than waiting even two minutes.

Don't think so, your suggestion introduces randomization at every level. Since we don't know how many teams are formed for every countdown and the average number of player trying to get in at the same time, processing the queue in order still looks more viable, as it forms teams based on the age rank of each member in the queue, a factor your suggestion as-is is completely ignoring.

I also don't see a reason why a user shouldn't be prioritized after multiple failed attempts at joining the game. It makes perfect sense.

Lemming just answered that for you. This is an elementary prob/stat problem. You can increase the odds of waiting multiple timers if you reduce the hypothetical number of players entering at any time, but you can't force the odds to be significant unless the number of players on the server is very small (in which case you're waiting anyway).

Since Borat has clarified what he meant, I agree that adding a priority trigger to Lemming's queue is a good addition. But it really isn't all that necessary, except for a dead arena.

I said:

You said:

The clear implication is that you don't understand what "variance" means. Hence the admonition to look it up. That's not a personal attack. It's simply clear from your response to my post (and your subsequent insistence that you're correct) that you don't understand the concept even if you think you do.

I've lost patience with you because you've repeatedly insisted that I ignored the point you are trying to make. But I accounted for that point (and rightly dismissed its importance) from the get go.

This whole thread is pointless. Anyone with common sense would have known syncing isn't against the ToS and is not punishable due to the fact all u have to do is countdown in chat or on vent/ts. Stop the QQ and get 3 friends and sync yourself. BTW I have achieved r2 without syncing at all so you really have no case.

Judging from the fact that pressing the enter button in RA at basically any hour almost always gives a match at the end of the countdown, it's a reasonably safe assumption that the queue fills as many teams as possible.

I'm not saying it shouldn't, I'm merely saying that it's nowhere near as relevant in Random Arenas as you're making it out to be.

If this is the case and they create as many teams/arena's to assign almost everyone one could just prioritize the remaining players, and then spread them over several teams in the next round.

If there are only enough players to fill a few teams every round you will see synced teams, even with random assignment.

No, he didn't. he pulled a number from thin air.

No, no, no, you were being nasty, if you'd truly believed I didn't know the word you'd have used half a sentence to explain it. Not to mention there's enough math from me floating this forum to indicate I would likely know it.

In the future, just be less stingy in your remarks and limit yourself to the actual points in the discussion, that will help you prevent making such mistakes.

No, you ignore the point when you start to argue about 'average' waiting time, where the point is that an extremely long waiting time will have a more impact on perception then the 'average' time. You then claim, without any evidence, that the chance of (extremely) long waiting times is negligible.

Well, it probably is for players, for the sake of voiding syncing.

It's likely not negligible for ANet that rather chose to process the queue in order, First Come-First Served/FIFO style, as observed.

This kind of approach is pretty common, simple to implement and offers no unfairness in the processing of the queue and high performance/quality of service, which is likely why they chose this instead of a full randomization, which usually affects processing performance significantly.

If the negative effect of syncing exceeds that of an occasional long wait then the choice for the longer wait would be reasonable.

If you have as many arena's as needed to empty the queue then implementing randomization of assignment to teams while maintaining a FIFO is not so hard - and it would have negligable impact on performance.