TLDR; Hard stuck politically dominated states suck due to mindsets of those who follow these principles, is this one of the reasons people are having problems with matchmaking?
Simple question on the potential effects of bad programming. Through multiple searches trying to understand how matchmaking works I have found that there is always a mention of ping based matchmaking being a component of Blizzard’s current system. I wonder if this leads to an unintended political/geographic component to matchmaking.
Full honesty here, I sometimes hate the area I live in. Not a simple hate the city, it turns into a full blown hate of multiple layers of states due to political proclivity. It is due to years of seeing the attitudes of political people in my home area being aggressive, manipulative, and utterly morally corrupt. It has lead to a philosophical query of if the grass is actually greener.
This question is haunting my thoughts as I found leaving my original hometown was an uplifting experience in finding less jerky people. But now the nightmare that the surrounding masses of overly aggressive tribalism worshipers is all consuming. Maybe i’m just tired of hearing the n-word spewing, autism hating, snowflake stomping, maga/antifa supremacists. Sadly, this is not an exaggeration. I don’t believe one long play session has walked away without one example of this behavior.
Pipe dream here, is there data disproving this? I would like to know if Blizzard devs actually test outside their “enlightened” area where I feel may exist a more tolerable gaming community filled with less toxic elements. Or is the unattainable option to get real data by moving out of the sea of political turmoil that is my current geography my only hope?
inb4 trolls: I left my political views ambiguous because both sides are toxic af. Some areas however, ARE FULL ON BG’s which lead to more hate and more hard-headness.
Short answer, yes it is location (NOT politically) biased, it has to be.
There are 2 servers used regularly (sometimes more during events), 1 in LA , and 1 in Chicago, the further away you are from 1 of these places, the worse your ping gets. This means they attempt match players with similar pings to avoid bad matches.
As for the political side of your question, yes obviously if you live in an area where people generally follow a specific belief, you will see more of said people in your game. This is not however an issue that can or should be fixed by blizz. They are doing their job of providing the most stable match they can for everyone, regardless of their beliefs. You can always try to VPN to somewhere else if you think it will fix your issue, but the only thing you will accomplish is unstable matches due to the ping increase.
So yes it is location biased, but is is most definitely not politically biased.
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I love this response because it tries to separate location from politics. In saying that matchmaking is location biased, I believe that is the same as politically biased. I believe it can be easily and correctly argued that the bias of thought one way or the other can be PROVEN by location, due to social nature of humanity. At least in majority.
I tried to point this out as inadvertent consequences of bad programming because programming by pure logic leads to unseen consequences. A great example of this I believe can be found in Ultima Online where the dev team worked only in a test environment (ideal data set) while a bug ran rampant on the live environment (real world data set). They spent months stating that everything was working as intended and ticking off players.
Lets use the South as an example, the majority of the South is one political set. It is also potentially a large customer base. Their mindset could be one the contributing factors in why matchmaking is seen as unfair/biased or if the community is toxic. They are potentially “cordoned off” by location/ping based matchmaking. When people are separated from the larger populace, they will never see the diversity of the community. They will see and hear an echo chamber of the locations ideologies.
If you play east of Chicago…you will play people that live east of Chicago.
It’s location-based over a very broad range. You aren’t likely to be matched against your neighbors. People on the east coast will play each other and those on the west coast will play each other. Which you play with will be based on your proximity to one of the 2 server locations. If you notice people leaning towards one side of the political spectrum, it is likely pure coincidence.
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More like confirmation bias. They already think that so therefore look for anything to confirm their preexisting belief.
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I’ve noticed I’ve been playing with more “right wing” players, much to my delight. I prefer playing with them because my words don’t have to be anywhere as near as self censored.
I think you are just misunderstanding what a biased matchmaker implies. The matchmaker is location biased because it has to be, all online matchmakers are.
To say that it is politically biased is to imply that the matchmaker uses political beliefs as a statistic when determining matches, it in no way does this. All you are seeing is the influence that location has on peoples political beliefs.
No offense, but all you are doing is trying to connect a dot that doesn’t exist because you seem to want it to (AKA confirmation bias). Either that, or you do not understand the meaning of the word “bias”.
At the end of the day, you have to consider what is really good or bad for a video game. Would you rather have shots not connect, die through genji deflects, get shattered though shields; or would you rather deal with people that have different political beliefs than you?
Attack my concept not me thanks. I’m not looking for a dot that doesn’t exist, I’m arguing a dot exists and causes an unexpected result. I’m stating an argument that LOCATION = POLITCAL BELIEFS on a majority of cases. Then when you section off a populace and remove them from playing with all people, it leads to a community that becomes increasingly focused in those beliefs.
At the end of the day I AM imagining what is good or bad for a video game. A community that increasingly becomes ok with telling people to kill themselves, call people the n word, and promote attacks against mental health and those with those conditions is not good for a video game. And the other side is true as well as a community that becomes so in love with aiding each other that it is bannable offense to have free choice in opposition of a team mate IS ALSO A BAD thing for a video game. Echo chambers create these environments and I proposed the idea on that basis.
The Matchmaker reflects a number of desired and unwanted side effects.
One of the match start conditions is the latency of the players. (over time)
Here the latency times are an exception compared to other conditions.
If you are not in the same latency range as another player, there is no question of being matched with that player in the first place.
You never show up in the same player pool.
This leads to various player pools based on latency.
Since the matchmaker should always find a match in which the latency times are optimal, this leads to a geographical segmentation.
In different geographical zones, political opinions are valued differently. However, the N-word is not a political opinion.
If you want a better gaming experience then I have the following idea.
- Try out a VPN provider. (This will work for sure)
- Create a new Blizzard account, buy the game again, and pretend as best you can that you have a son/daughter (age 12) playing this game.
It’s best not to write anything in the game and never attract negative attention through your chat.
If there are any racist remarks or strong insults in the chat, take a screenshot, end the gaming session (important!) and send an email to Blizzard Support asking if they believe this is an appropriate environment for a 12 year old. Even with the best supervision, you can’t protect a kid from interacting with such people.
I am very sure that the Matchmaker considers psychological aspects, e.g. frustration, during the match composition.
The matchmaker can do more than just calculate chances of winning and predict the outcome of a match.
The matchmaker can determine how likely it is that the above-mentioned offences will occur in a match.
I therefore think it is possible that some accounts will be better protected against these offences than others. While offenders are more often placed in a match with other offenders.
If these ideas don’t help, all you can do is deactivate the chat or stop playing the game.
ANTCRSTM
I am very sure that the Matchmaker considers psychological aspects, e.g. frustration, during the match composition.
Now that is a fascinating thought. In essence if that exists it would be factors times larger in segmenting these communities than simple location based matchmaking. Is there blue quotes hinting at this being included in the matchmaking code? If not I’d prefer not to believe the situation is worse then it already is with confirmed geological bias.
And quick note… derogatory slurs are not a political belief: Fact. Derogatory slurs are a byproduct of extremist political beliefs: Fact. As already shown in replies to this thread, attacking the person is the easiest fallacy in any discussion or argument. Tribalism is at root a political belief, and as such attacks based on “tribes”/groups are then going to become common. They are simple calls to action by others with similar beliefs to rally and subjugate the minority.
To fine-tune the matchmaking process, the system may include an analytics and feedback engine that analyzes player and match data to determine whether a given match was good. A match may be deemed “good” when a player is determined to have enjoyed gameplay associated with the match based on one or more quality factors that are used as a proxy for player satisfaction. The quality factors may include, for example, a duration of a gameplay session (e.g., via analysis of player historical data), player psychological state (e.g., frustration level), and/or other information.
Just a patent that amazingly confirms many things I’ve observed myself.
It’s worth reading a little.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9789406B2/en
That is a sickening patent. The effect of having whales parade in front of those with less is psychologically horrifying. It would be (is?) an automated gambling addiction creator! And what kind of effect would it have on play groups? If this were gamable, then all new accounts could be min maxed with controlled purchases and observations leading to LITERAL PAY TO WIN.
They are not sectioning anyone off, they only try to make the most stable match they can AFTER matching through SR. Ping is only 1 of the many stats they use to match games. I personally get matched with people in LA multiple times per play session despite living on the east cost of canada (literally the opposite side of the continent) multiple times every play session, and those games are far from fair or stable since I have around 150-250 ping. So the argument that players are being “sectioned off” is mostly invalid. Even if you could only get put on the east coast Chicago server when you were on the east coast, that is still half a continent you could be getting matched with.
Also if you had fully understood my post, you would have seen that my main point was that it is not politically biased. Again: Politically biased implies that the matchmaker uses political beliefs as a statistic when matching players, it in no way does this. It DOES however, match people with similar pings for the most stable match possible, meaning that you will more often be matched with people in your general area of the continent if said players are online. This CAN lead to people having similar political beliefs being matched together (which by the way, does not make them inherently more or less toxic), but it in no way makes the matchmaker “politically biased”.
Seriously look up the definition of “bias”, or anything about how online matchmakers work, and you might actually understand my counter-argument instead of just saying that I am “attacking” you, and attempting to dismiss an equally valid point.
tldr for MercyMain; Read the caps and help me not to want to call you out on being a jerk.
MercyMain i’d like to give you a reference of what I mean when I state that when things are equal (or nearly so) they become redundant for purpose of causality. During the post civil rights era a literacy test was proposed for eligibility to vote. This test was designed to test reading comprehension. This test (purposefully) was racist. Reading comprehension and race were correlative factors at that time due to the state of education in minorities. This was purposefully done to limit the vote of newly righted minorities in racist areas. It wasn’t wrong in concept (that people who can’t comprehend what they read shouldn’t vote), but it was wrong in practice (minorities without higher education can’t vote).
- Inb4 peeps say I think lesser intelligent people shouldn’t vote… I think they should have help. If you can’t understand what a bill is about you probably shouldn’t be chiming in about it. Because voting isn’t just about names guys
I am not saying that purposefully Blizzard have segmented people. I’m saying that it is happening if the matchmaking system values latency and location at any value above 0.1! It could be argued further that economic bias is present as well since more expensive forms of internet will create more tiers of latency variation and connection based segregation.
I think optimally, when I ask that you attack my thesis and not me, you fundamentally don’t understand what you are doing. You have argued for me to research more (get gud and smart), you stated your opinion invalidates my whole thesis, and you have repeatedly attacked me on my understanding of a word. I KNOW WHAT BIAS MEANS. BECAUSE SOMETHING IS ACCIDENTALLY BIASED DOESN’T MEAN IT ISN’T BIASED. Your argument and statements of geological bias only strengthens my argument that an unintended consequence can and has arose from the matchmaking code. I have in no way or form attempted to counter your counter point. You have however used personal attack ideology to attempt to dismiss my thesis.
Look, I don’t really care all that much about if the statement “the matchmaker is politically biased” is true or false, believe what you want to.
What I do care about is the stability of the game, and any matchmaker that values stability less than something else that can be fixed in other ways (like toxicity), is a poorly designed system.
TBH I do not know all that much about language, but I know a whole lot about game and network programming. Political motifs aside, a game developers primary goal when creating an online matchmaker is to create stable/functioning games (especially in a competitive environment where small ping differences can have big effects on a players performance). Everything else is secondary, with the exception of SR in this case since comp is a ranked ladder.
What I’m getting at is the toxicity issue can be improved in so many other ways than changing ping restrictions. Any online competitive matchmaker that does not prioritize a stable connection with as little lag as possible, is a bad system.