Bifurcated Scoring System for Gaming Matchmaking
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In gaming systems, user rankings often stagnate after initial skill development, leading to a sense of boredom and lopsided matches due to scores not accurately reflecting skill levels, and introducing new features or rules is costly and can be exploitative.
Innovation Solution
A bifurcated scoring system that separates internal scores, reflecting current skill levels, from external scores, which are periodically reset to provide a sense of progression, allowing internal scores to accurately match players and external scores to quickly reflect skill levels without requiring new game features or rules.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the player's score is divorced from the player's skill to combat stagnation, then player engagement is improved, but skill-based matchmaking accuracy deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the single score metric into two separate score types: external scores that are displayed to players and can be reset periodically to maintain engagement, and internal scores that are used exclusively for skill-based matchmaking and reflect true player skill levels. This segmentation allows each score type to serve its specific function without compromising the other.
2Ease of operation
If new game features and rules are introduced periodically to combat stagnation, then player engagement is improved, but development cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the parameters of the existing scoring system by introducing periodic resets of external scores and implementing a dual-score architecture. This allows the system to combat player stagnation through parameter adjustments rather than requiring development of new game features, modes, or rules, thereby maintaining engagement while avoiding increased complexity.
3Speed
If the player's score changes rapidly during initiation phase, then skill development is reflected, but score stagnation occurs after basic strategies are learned
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic score adjustment where external scores can be reset periodically to create new progression cycles, while internal scores continue to accumulate and reflect long-term skill development. This dynamic approach allows the system to adapt the score change rate and progression duration based on player skill level and engagement needs.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are described herein for a gaming system that maintains an internal score and an external score for each user. The system maintains the internal scores to reflect demonstrated user skill. The system uses the accurate internal scores to facilitate communication between client computing devices associated with users that have been selected to participate in gameplay instances based on the internal scores. The external scores maintained by the system displayed to the users. Because the external scores are not used for matchmaking, the external scores may be adjusted in any way without requiring internal consistency. For example, to combat gameplay stagnation, the gameplay system periodically resets maintained external scores. For a time, comparisons between the reset external scores do not accurately reflect the users' rankings within the game. However, as the users participate in gameplay, the external scores return to levels that are similar to the users' internal scores.