Online Game Matchmaking by Skill and Latency Grouping
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing online gaming systems fail to address unfair advantages and inconsistent gameplay experiences due to varying communication latencies and skill levels among geographically distributed players, leading to diminished user engagement and trust in the gaming environment.
Innovation Solution
An apparatus, method, and system that identify client devices with similar game parameters and communication latencies, grouping them to enable fair and engaging gameplay sessions by ensuring players with comparable skills and latency engage in the same game session.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If geographically distributed servers and client devices are used to expand player base and server capacity, then the number of players and server capacity increase, but communication latency varies and creates unfair advantages
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments players into different latency groups based on their communication latency measurements, and further divides them into subgroups with similar latency characteristics. This segmentation allows the system to match players with comparable latency conditions, ensuring fair gameplay while maintaining the ability to serve geographically distributed players across different regions.
2Adaptability or versatility
If players with different skill levels are allowed to play together, then the number of available players increases, but gameplay experience becomes inconsistent and boring
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments players into skill-based groups using skill assessment data, creating distinct skill levels. Players are then matched within these homogeneous skill groups rather than being mixed, ensuring consistent and engaging gameplay experiences while still providing access to a large player base through regional server deployment.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies different matching criteria for different player groups based on their skill levels and latency characteristics. By tailoring the matching process to local group characteristics (skill level, latency range), the system optimizes gameplay experience quality for each group while maintaining overall system versatility.
3Reliability
If latency compensation mechanisms are implemented to ensure fairness, then gameplay fairness improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary latency measurement and skill assessment of players before they are assigned to game sessions. By pre-measuring latency and pre-assessing skill levels, the system can proactively group players with similar characteristics together, ensuring fairness is built into the matching process rather than requiring complex real-time compensation mechanisms during gameplay.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus for managing an online game. The apparatus including a processor and a memory. The processor is configured to identify a set of client devices engaged in an online game; identify game parameters associated with client devices in the set; define group of client devices from the set of client devices, wherein the at least one group of client devices includes client devices with similar game parameter; determine communication latency between each of the client devices in the group of client devices and a server; define subgroup of client devices from each of the group of client devices, wherein the subgroup of client devices includes client devices with a similar communication latency; and enable the client devices in the subgroup of client devices to engage in a game session of the online game.