Back in October 2017, it was revealed that Activision is working on a new matchmaking system that would pair players together in order to encourage microtransactions. And while this system has not been implemented in any game as of yet, another publisher is searching into getting rid of fair matchmaking in multiplayer games. That publisher is no other than EA who has already implemented its dynamic difficulty adjustment in multiple games.
But let’s start from the beginning. Spotted by YongYea, EA is using a dynamic difficulty adjustment for its games. This is a technique for adaptively changing a game to make it easier or harder.
As Electronic Arts claimed:
“In this paper, we propose a DDA framework with a global optimization objective of maximizing a player’s engagement throughout the entire game. Using level-based games as our example, we model a player’s progression as a probabilistic graph. Dynamic difficulty reduces to optimizing transition probabilities to maximize a player’s stay time in the progression graph.”
EA concluded that it has successfully developed a system that applies this technique in multiple games and has observed up to 9% improvement in player engagement with a neutral impact on monetization.
Now some could say that there is nothing wrong with dynamic difficulty adjustments as long as these implementations are fair for all players. However, imagine if such mechanics appeared in games like Dark Souls or Nioh. These games would immediately lose their appeal. Not only that, but we don’t know whether other titles suffer from bugs of that DDA implementation. Remember all those scripted moments in FIFA that made you swear that there was something wrong with the game? A lot of players claimed in the past that the game was deliberately upping the difficulty (or to be more precise, it was making their teammates dumber). Since we don’t have access to its source code, are we sure that EA has not done something to dynamically adjust the difficulty behind players’ backs?
Not only that, but Electronic Arts is also looking into getting rid of the fair matchmaking in multiplayer games. Current games rely on offering a fair machmaking system. However, EA’s employees/researches suggest a different system that would end fair matchmaking. As their research reads.
“In this paper, we propose an Engagement Optimized Matchmaking (EOMM) framework that maximizes overall player engagement. We prove that equal-skill based matchmaking is a special case of EOMM on a highly simplified assumption that rarely holds in reality. Our simulation on real data from a popular game made by Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) supports our theoretical results, showing significant improvement in enhancing player engagement compared to existing matchmaking methods.”
While this unfair matchmaking system has not found its way to any game yet, it’s obvious that EA is interested in this, especially since a simulation supported its theoretical results. Whether future online games, like Anthem, will suffer from this ‘engagement optimized matchmaking‘ system remains to be seen!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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EA doing sleazy things to push microtransactions? Surely not.
but, yeah.
Regarding “DDA”; that was discussed some months ago on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FIFA/comments/799a9y/a_paper_written_by_ea_employees_on_dynamic/
Also, the complete article can be viewed here:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/16c4/5d99437bd43e0e60fe160f058e3d824ef79d.pdf
Regarding “EOMM”; the complete article can be viewed here:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3562/ed47225c461df47b1d69410e40d58e8860e0.pdf
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/87b09ad35be2312e273e10e0be888060c93adff32b42ade1617441bb18e9b795.png
Thats a insult for nazis!
TO nazis !
…So?
Left 4 Dead uses DDA in the form of “The AI Director.”
Resident Evil 4 has a hidden difficulty scale (only discovered very recently) that “adjusts both enemy behavior/attacks used and enemy damage/resistance based on the player’s performance.”
This has been going on for over a decade and it has worked before. DDA is not inherently a bad thing.
That maybe so, but in conjunction with the “EOMM” it’s clear where that sh*t’s gonna go: Adjust the game difficulty ‘accordingly’ and then force microtransactions onto the player.
“Not only that, but we don’t know whether other titles suffer from bugs of that DDA implementation.”
I have never heard such a ridiculous argument in my entire life! So they shouldn’t use this DDA in case it has a bug!? So games shouldn’t have any enemies at all then, in case their AI has a bug and become unbeatable? Just make every game a walking simulator, in case they have a bug.
DDA is already being used in games, it’s a decent way of making the game more fluid and dynamic, having it increase the level of enemies as you progress and improve is more natural. Not all games do or will use this method of level design, like Dark Souls for example.
Left 4 Dead uses it and does it brilliantly, it was one of it’s selling point and nobody moaned about that.
I hate EA as much as the next man for some of the sh*t they’ve pulled, but come on, people are grasping at anything here to have a go.
what a fa**ot loser b*tch defending EA, c**ksucking indian piece of sh*t b*tcha*s of a hoebag.
DDA in L4D was done only for the AI and not in a greedy attempt to force people into buying more goddamn lootboxes, there’s a canyon of difference in the motivation behind their implementation.
I saw Jim Sterling’s video about this yesterday. The likes of EA and Activision are evidently even more scummy than we thought.
Just like Sterling himself.
Sterling may have the misfortune of having been infected by Liberalism and of exhibiting certain traits common to SJWs but he nevertheless does a grand job in calling out the grubby shenanigans of the so-called triple-A games industry. I simply ignore his infantile politics and focus on what he has to say about said shenanigans.
He covers for his SJW buddies and has no qualms about lying and withholding information to do so. You never know when SJW types might be involved in the background so Sterling is not trustworthy, if one of his neon-haired friends had a prominent position in EA he’d be twisting the story to defend the company.
Your mental breakdown continues.
Congrats on being able to read. Your mental breakdown, indeed.
As ever, you see whatever you choose to see so do carry on with your delusions. You’re good to laugh at if nothing else.
I knew Gov intervention wouldn’t scare them away. They see what they want to make money from, and nothing will stop them unless they are put down. Any AAA company will want what they want, until it’s far too late to realise that what they want is a bad thing for the consumer.
To paraphrase a certain classic movie,
“Listen, and understand! That triple-A publisher is out there! It can’t be
bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until your wallet is empty!”
Then EA will take your credit card!
It’s official. I’m boycotting EA. I can’t tolerate this crap from them anymore. Anyone else in?
I’m boycottng (by not buying its games) a lot of publishers at the moment
-Nintendo now sells difficulty settings, cheats, lootboxes, singleplayer P2W, “on disc” DLCs, Unfinished games and a ton of casual oriented crap, leaving more experienced players with nothing good to play
-Ubisoft, Activision (Blizzard), EA, Capcom. Self explanatory. It’s greed is very disgusting to me. Still, they do not reach Nintendo’s level.
And since I do not own a Play Station or a Xbox I don’t buy Sony and Microsoft stuff
I’m with you for the most part, but I’m not sure what you mean with Nintendo. Do you mean things like amiibo that give you extra hearts and s uch?
I’m also pretty sure they haven’t put out any unfinished games or on disk DLC. They’re games seem to be some of the most polished in the industry right now (aside from some initial frame rate issues in BOTW, but that’s was a new console so I’ll let that slide).
all the amiibo content is on disc DLC, Amiibos do not store data (not that kind of data) they just act as a key to unlock content that’s already in the game.
In other games amiibos are very “lootbox-like” since you scan the amiibo and you obtain randon stuff. Stuff that can turn the balance of the game in your favour. being pretty much a P2W experience. Of course its for offline content so you do not ruin other people experience, but still, you are paying to have advantage. offline or online does not change that fact
While in games like Mario they are just like cheats. Want infinite health? scan the amiibo whenever you want, want the location of all the collectibles? spend $15 in this amiibo and it will tell you where everything is, etc.
BotW is pretty much unfinished since it halted, kind of, its development to make the switch port (because the wii u failure) and came without hard difficulty,also , all the DLCs announcements before launch means the game could have that content on launch but they cut to make some easy money. Also, Arms and Splatoon are games with very little content at launch that improved over the time, but still both games feel like they rushed the launch.
now that all microsoft games are coming to pc since 2016 you can buy them you dont need a xbox
I’ve got a fantastic idea: how about we just have a server browser. Plain ol server browser that shows you the games going on and you pick for yourself where you want to play. Groundbreaking idea that should have never been abandoned. To hell with EA, Activision and anyone like them.
The argument in the article against this system is comparing the difficulty adjustment to single player games. I for one am alright being matchmade with players of my own skill level. Don’t care to get decimated by some no-lifer over and over again.
EA can suck a d!ck at this point, never buying anything from them ever again..
because “givemeyourmoney” and “ineedmoremoney”
I told my friend about this very thing tonight, and his reaction was “Well I’m still going to buy their games because my friends play them”. He complains to me about MTX and everything else when he does, that Activision or EA games have every single time a game comes out that dives further and further into the Marianas Trench of gaming. I meanwhile haven’t played a video game with them in years, I’ll stick to Path Of Exile and AA gaming that doesn’t try to screw my wallet every ten seconds.
EA get rid of fair matchmaking? Not a problem. I got rid of EA games ages ago.
No regrets.