Using VPN to bypass long queue time - Page 3

On April 01 2018 06:49 GrantTheAnt wrote:
We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this way

The upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.

I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.

On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).

On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.

On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.

We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.

It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.

TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it.

On April 01 2018 07:52 ProtossGG wrote:
As a last note, if you're up to date on "Fish server" which was a very popular korean server during the 1.16 days, the BEST latency on that server was our current TR14 (the koreans called it #L2 + low lat hack ... just to give some background in case you're not familiar). So introducing concepts of TR16++ are just icing on the cake. We need to simply aim for TR12; even TR14 was still something that was introduced in the latter part of 1.16 before SCR came out. Food for thought. For reference, I'm a 2300+ MMR player, and there's folks in these threads posting higher than myself who can chime in on behalf of the more competitive foreigner community as well. Thanks for your acknowledgement and we hope to assist or answer any other questions you may have.

On April 01 2018 07:52 ProtossGG wrote:
As a last note, if you're up to date on "Fish server" which was a very popular korean server during the 1.16 days, the BEST latency on that server was our current TR14 (the koreans called it #L2 + low lat hack ... just to give some background in case you're not familiar). So introducing concepts of TR16++ are just icing on the cake. We need to simply aim for TR12; even TR14 was still something that was introduced in the latter part of 1.16 before SCR came out. Food for thought. For reference, I'm a 2300+ MMR player, and there's folks in these threads posting higher than myself who can chime in on behalf of the more competitive foreigner community as well. Thanks for your acknowledgement and we hope to assist or answer any other questions you may have.

On March 31 2018 13:48 mLtySC wrote:
The last time I played ladder I hit shamtoo 3 times in a row and then quit. Will probably give ladder another go when I get my pc fixed, but that was kind of frustrating.

On April 01 2018 06:49 GrantTheAnt wrote:
We're still here, and we're always listening. I acknowledge that it's an ongoing cause of angst that we're not posting/communicating as actively as we'd like to, and you'd like us to. This is because - unlike many other teams at Blizzard - the dev team are communicating directly. There are good reasons why other teams don't work like us in this respect, and I'm sure we cause endless stress for our PR/community teams in working this way

The upside is that we get a direct line, and I believe we're quite candid (as much as we reasonably can be). The downside is that posting takes time - and that steals time away from development. So it's a balancing act - we can't just bash out a rapid fire answer on a forum because misplaced words can be interpreted in ways we never intended, so we need to spend a little more time with our responses. The more time spent typing in a forum is less time spent typing code. Hence why I'm posting this outside core hours.

I believe we have great coverage of reading feedback on the Blizzard forums, and I'd say pretty good coverage of TL. I understand that us not responding to every point and every thread may make people think we haven't read it. Chances are we have. Chances are it's been immediately discussed and/or put into a tracking list for further investigation and possibly action.

On the video dev updates, I agree it's been a little longer than it should be. We've actually been working on the next one recently, so it's coming soon(TM).

On 1v1 MM, it's been an ongoing battle to find an algorithm and a balance that works globally for SCR. We've always strongly believed that a global MM is essential for SCR to survive globally. Our initial algorithm was returning too many high latency matches. We solved that with a major change, but I agree that we over corrected. Since then we've rolled out 2 further tweaks (one yesterday) to bring us back towards a happy medium. I am convinced that the algorithm we're now using is the right direction, and - unlike our previous algorithm - it can get us to a good place for everyone. But, being honest, that's still going to take some more time and experimentation.

On numbers & concurrency, we do have some headaches. Namely, that most of our population is in Korea (no surprises), and that overall it's still (and has always been) a relatively low population compared to more recent games. It's also compounded by Korea having incredible internal connectivity, and by comparison, most of the rest of the world does not. So Koreans get to MM for the most part now in an experience not dissimilar from playing on LAN. Understandably the rest of the world wants this too. And providing as close as we can to that is of course the challenge. But, I really don't think we're facing any new problems in this area from launch (other than perhaps the bar is now higher given the optimizations we've made to the network subsystem vs 1.16 - which has allowed TR20 and TR24 over the internet and without 6112 port forwarding any more). I guess what I'm saying is, in my view, MM in the foreigner scene is as solvable via the algorithm as it has ever been.

We really are doing everything we can to make MM a great experience for everyone. Obviously we've talked to other Blizzard teams about their experiences, but taking that further, last week I visited GDC and sat down with the head of the matchmaking team at Activision to canvas their ideas and harvest their many years of experience. I was buoyed by the meeting as it really seemed like we were doing a lot of things right. It was also evident that we are facing some unique problems with SCR - we want low latency, skill relevant matches without having substantial player concurrency where most of our players are in one region with incredible connectivity, and we want to get games in a reasonable time frame. In saying that, I'm also aware that different players have different views on what's most important, and so maybe there's a world where we offer a preference button in the MM on whether you want to optimize on search time, skill, latency, or a "balanced" option.

It's certainly not ideal that folks are having to use VPNs to confuse or circumvent the MM algorithm. TR/latency prediction is super difficult, even more so globally. We've been investigating how we can improve the latency/TR prediction we use to configure the MM algorithm on a per-client basis. After last week's meeting, we're also going to get access to a vast database of latency data from the Activision MM crew plus their research on latency calculation which may also help us improve those areas of the algorithm.

TLDR the MM is still a major priority for us, as it has been since launch. Please keep the feedback coming, and rest assured we are reading it and working on it.

On April 05 2018 09:26 RomeD wrote:
I haven't really had any problems with the global match making or latency. Its been great to see the network improvements. I think their is a vocal minority of people having issues. Which its definitely good to hear and adjust, but keep in mind most of the rest of us are just enjoying getting in games when we can, and watching ASL5. Really looking forwards to 2v2 MM and a glad to hear its in the works. I played a 2v2 game recently and it actually went really well no lag thanks to your networking improvements, even with a friend who hadn't portforwarded and was a known lagger in previous patches. Additionally, I think the F2P and remastered MM has brought a lot more activity to and resurrected the game. Ignore the haters and keep up the good work Grant.

On April 05 2018 10:20 Shinokuki wrote:


what are you talking about? This isn’t a minority issue. Everyone from even 1500 mmr is suffering from low population issue and is having to face same player again and again. You have no clue do you?