Some of us at morat.net had a discussion about typical problems a games player may face when playing a multiplayer game. We set about discussing the kind of features gamers would like to see used in their games, to beat the typical problems or simply to increase their enjoyment of the game. Now bear in mind most of the people involved are big teamplay game-style fans (TFC,CS,FLF) so this article may be slightly biased in that direction, but, I think overall the discussion brought conclusions which could be applied to all FPS games and perhaps to a lesser extent some of the other types of multiplayer games out there.

First of all we addressed some of the usual problems multiplayer gamers face when playing games online.

1. Antisocial Gamers (Llamas)
You join a public server, you're having fun and all of a sudden it all goes to pot. Someone is obviously cheating or being abusive, generally being antisocial and basically removing other players enjoyment of the game for their own amusement.

2. New to a game/mod
New gamers, They try their favorite single player game out online they get treated to a barrage of abuse for infecting/shooting their own team and for asking where to take the flag / who to kill. Obviously quite often they get killed a lot and don't even manage to notch up a single kill as their knowledge of the online experience is limited.

3. Finding a a game where you are evenly matched.
Veterans want to join a server where they can play against a lot of people of similar ability and knowledge. Sure they can join a server where they know everyone in the game, but, what happens when you want to recruit new people to your clan, or meet some new friends who have similar experience's?

We then set about finding out ways in which we could overcome these problems and make the whole experience a better one for everyone:

Vit: OK. here's a suggestion which would aid veterans - player profiles. Fill one in with 'I want to play with people who've played for 3 years' or whatever and then it returns servers with players who match your level.
Oz: An experience system?
SHP: that's a good idea
Vit: well, no, because SOME vets like playing with newbies
DM: I like enthusiastic newbies
SHP: Wait though, its still basically a good idea. Think about it - you could choose to play with other newbies, medium skilled players or veterans depending on your own preference.
Vit: well, I was thinking less direct things like to pair like 'which country' or 'ping' and so on. You could do some quite complicated matchmaking...
SHP: OK, picture this, you're in a normal single player game, its really hard, but still you enjoy it, you want to get further but its just really hard, what do you do?
SHP: You lower the skill setting, so you get further, until you adjust to the way the game plays
Vit: well basically, yes. So you are saying difficulty levels, on a fun to serious slider...
SHP: yes, unless, you WANT to have a harder learning curve.
Oz: I think its an excellent idea, but unlikely to ever be implemented until vpp*

* VPP is player persistent data built into the half-life SDK2, in layman's terms, it can track individual players statistics

Vit: On the other hand, people could abuse it, by saying they want to join an easier game than the level they are actually at, so they get more kills
DM: and if you had an experience system which gave you benefits in game players would hack it and give themselves more experience to get better statistics
Vit: but... if you fix THAT by giving out 'this person is cheating' points, letting them spread so that you avoid all the people he hangs out with and thus avoiding them...

Oz: OK what about lots of newbies stuck together, 16 HW in a server
Oz: No way forward for them
Vit: you don't force it, that's my point. Let the player decide when they want to move on

The conversation moved onto different methods of judging a players skill level/experience (their profile) before I continued the conversation with Vitenka. We discussed making a game style which would take the basic FPS ethos and improve on it:

SHP: OK what's the single thing most people want to achieve in a game... They want to get 'elite' status, be the best, or one of them. Imagine a game where your profile could take statistics, based on how they play, the style, their statistics based, on objective achieving, playing the game fairly and so on.
SHP: my idea is that the statistics would not affect the things you could do in a game, like in Deus ex. But with the statistics, you could use them to track llamas or antisocial gamers as well as player ability or level.
SHP: the statistics wouldn't affect in game abilities. You don't want to have someone joining a game and playing against a year old veteran who is literally unbeatable because he has 7000 skill points and therefor can be invisible and can carry a big gun o' instant death
Vit: unless that person WANTS to :)
SHP: obviously, but what if he is a new player and does not yet know what he wants
Vit: then you have defaults to set him on easy :)
SHP: OK take an example: my first game of HL DM - I got my butt severely whooped, it was humiliating. I wanted to know why after completing half-life in single player mode on the hardest level, I could come online and be useless in DM, I mean I only finished it on hard level so I would be ready for the MP game. What I did was look things up on the net to make myself a better player. On the other hand, a friend of mine, in his first taste of TFC, got his butt whooped (a good few times) and has never played online games since.
Vit: yes...
SHP: he doesn't want to play people who can whoop his ass in his first taste - he wants to play new players like himself, BUT... any old player can join the server and rip him to pieces and proclaim himself king for a day, Even though the 'self proclaimed kings' actual accomplishment was more like a heavyweight boxer being let loose on 8 year old kids.
Vit: OK
SHP: If there was profiling of the player and the statistics were used to stop you joining a server meant only for newbies then that scenario couldn't happen and my mate could start his MP experience with people of a similar stature and may even still be playing today.
Vit: Hmmm... so the server admins would get to choose what rating their server was
SHP: yes
SHP: you could have easy / not so easy /mid / veteran / elite servers
SHP: think about it - people wouldn't want to quit till they could play on the elite servers, I know I wouldn't and even then the bare fact that I was an elite player would keep me playing for longer...
Vit: heh, OK suggestion from me - servers can decide whether to enforce or not, but the 'group' (newbie, skilled, vet) is decided by the players on at that time - so if its 3 newbs on an enforced server the server defaults to Newbie level
SHP: OK, so we agree its valid so long as you can have the server enforced to the player skill level or not enforced at all - or perhaps even decided by a vote.

After agreeing on this feature Vitenka however managed to find some good counter arguments with this setup (as is customary)

Vit: OK, problem - players will ALWAYS be able to create a new online persona and go rampage the newbie servers, and worse, what about the vet who installs hl on a new machine?
SHP: this is where you reach the same drawbacks all online RPG's hit, but they seem to work
Vit: well, sort of
Vit: they're not to everyone's taste...
SHP: yes, but this is a fps I'm thinking of right now, the new persona for lamers would be a problem until you made everyone's CD key their user id
Vit: no, they HAVE to be able to make a new persona or opt not to have one
Vit: simple privacy rights
SHP: they can delete the old one profile that's not a problem, but, they cant have more then one profile to use on enforced servers
SHP: so 1 unique id per person, they cant log into enforced servers without it
Vit: and you do this how? they could buy two copies of the game, couldn't run on two PC's
Vit: also, remember, this will be using WON which is a buggy program that hands out Id's left right and centre...
SHP: I'm not saying this has to be WON, it could be a new system, besides WON is better than the Diablo 2 servers
Vit: true, but it's still rubbish
SHP: you take what you can get, but I still think its a good idea
Vit: as do I

Conclusions:

We came to the conclusion that profiling individual players and saving those players sates to allow them access to different servers depending on their experience/LVL/Rating/ would be basically a good idea. As long as it was not necessarily enforced on ALL public servers, it would make sure all beginners found similar newbie servers/time slots where they were safe to try out their new game before jumping into the more advanced levels. Veterans would be able to find advanced, fair, balanced servers and have an ultimate goal of becoming an accredited ELITE gamer. The stats could also be used to track things like team killers, server bans, kicks, and basically log any activity the player got up to on enforced servers. Meaning these servers would then be a safe haven for people who wished to have a good, friendly, and most of all fair multiplayer experience.

Afterthoughts:

Well after looking over this again I've noticed a whole world of possibilities which player profiling could open up and to be fair some games have profiling to some degree, but as yet, no system where your profiles affects your in game experience to any degree and are saved. I'm aware a lot of these points are controversial but I'm sure they also bring up some great ideas to improve the gaming experience.

If you have anything to say about this editorial feel free to e-mail me , and who knows if we get enough response we may do another editorial on your thoughts.

One more thing... If you are a games or mod developer and you are thinking of using any ideas on this page or indeed have plans to include this kind of system in your game/mod then feel free to get in touch with us here at Morat as I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

And finally thanks to everyone who took part in the discussion.