But will Age of Mythology’s in game match making server fail miserably like Empire Earth’s? Or will it rise up to the occasion like WarCraft III?
For those of you who do not know what an IGMMS is, an in game match making server is where you get into multiplayer games inside the game. Half-Life and all it’s mods have it, Empire Earth has it, and WarCraft III has it. Among some of the ones that do not have an IGMMS are Age of Empires, Age of Kings, and Rainbow Six. Age of Kings has an Out of game match making server, which is what We have known for a long time that Age of Mythology will have an IGMMS, but will it succeed (like WarCraft III) or fail (like Empire Earth)? This is what I think Age of Mythology’s IGMMS will need in order to succeed. WarCraft III has visual images next to your Battle.net name to show which culture you play with the most. For example, at 25 wins with a certain culture, it will show an image of one of those cultures units. So it makes it easy for you to see the player’s favorite culture. It also shows the players skill “level.” And if you want more detailed statistic for that player, double click on his name and it will show you his wins and loses with each of the culture, and show who a frequently plays with (his game buddies). This, in my opinion, is an excellent idea for Age of Mythology. Although I think it should be “tampered” with in order to fit Age of Mythology instead of WarCraft III. I do not know how WarCraft III calculates the amount of “experience” you gain for each game, but after you gain a certain amount of “experience” you “level up.” You can lose experience by losing games. In Age of Mythology, when you first create a name, it should show an image of a question mark. Then as you start winning games with a certain culture you should get an image of that cultures villager. Then with more wins your image changes to more “powerful” units. For example if you play mostly Norse and you have 139 wins with them, it should show a Mountain Giant. But if another person has only 27 kills with the Norse, it will show an image of an Ulfsark. Of course lets say you have 25 wins with Norse and 25 Wins with Greeks. What Image would it show? It would show an image of the culture you first got 25 wins with. WarCraft III’s match making server has some problems. For example, when you enter a game it tries to match you up with people in the same level of you first. Then if there is not a game with the same level as you it will match you up with people that are +6 level more then you or –6 level more then you. You know what this means? It means in a 2v2 it could be a Level 6 and a Level 6 vs. a Level 6 and a Level 1… Seem fair doesn’t it? No one likes a game with a n00b on your team, and neither does a n00b like to be surrounded by heckling experts… This is what I propose for Age of Mythology’s Match Making Server. Instead of going by “levels” it should go by a win-lost ratio. (Example, you have won 100 games and lost 10 games, your win-lost ratio is 10, while someone who has won 5 games and lost 10 games is .5) Then when you select a random match it will find people that have the same W-L ratio as you (highly unlikely though, since decimals can go to the hundredths and even the thousandths), if it can find someone with the same W-L ration it will search for a game with people that are a tenth from your ratio (like if you have a ratio of .5 it will search for people that have W-L ratios of .6-.4). Then after that will go to 2 tenths, and so on and so forth until they find someone. In my opinion this will match people up very fairly. If you are a n00b, and have never played your ratio will be 0 (0 wins divided by 0 losses is 0) and will be matched with other n00bs, if that with people who have .1 ratios (1 win with 10 losses, 2 wins with 20 losses…). Now you might think this takes time to search through the hundreds of games on the Age of Mythology Server to find one that is of the same Ratio Level as you. In WarCraft III it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to find a server. Instead of Age of King’s 15 minutes to 1 hour to find a game only for it to be abandoned by some n00b… It is highly efficient and is a very fast way to get into a quick game (in Age of Kings you had to have the whole evening to get in 1 game, and you were lucky to squeeze in 2). With that said I think that Ensemble Studios will do a superb job with creating this IGMMS, and have learned from Empire Earth on what not to do, and from WarCraft III on what to do (and perfect). I also think that this Age of Mythology Alpha Test will help perfect the IGMMS that Ensemble Studios and Microsoft have created for Age of Mythology. Which will polish it and perfect it for the finishing product.
they aren't smart enough to make their own.