On April 7, EA submitted a patent which patents matchmaking based on retention rate, which means if you leave all the time during online gameplay you might be in trouble next console generation.
Basically, this gives EA a lot of potential data to work with, such as information on rage quitters, people who play a lot with each other, or avoiding newcomers with veterans. Retention data can be used in a lot of ways. For EA specifically, they want to use it to potentially generate "... the retention time of a set of users. a queue of potential users, a set of teammates, and/or opponents may be provided to the parameter model to generate a predicted retention time." This would then lead to teammates and/or opponents being chosen if their "predicted retention time meets a predetermined threshold."
EA notes that if players are playing people that they actually want to play with, ie., people that aren't toxic, then "engagement and/or retention level for a number of users may be improved compared to existing multiplayer matching systems." Well yeah, I guess. Who wants to go online after a day of work and tear their hair out because of trolls? I mean, if that's what you're into you do you, but most people play video games to relax and not to get sweaty, so it's cool to see EA acknowledging this. Team composition is important, and if EA are implementing tools like this to help make better teams and online experiences as a whole then I'm all for it.
Quick Take
This... actually sounds like a great idea. All it takes is one guy leaving a ranked game to ruin it for anyone else, so EA patenting a tool that allows them to monitor and enact protocols so that like-minded players play together is great. In fact, what would make it even better is for all the trolls and rage quitters and leavers are grouped up in their own special queue, so they can sweat and yell at each other there and leave everyone else alone.
What do you think of this news? Do you like the steps that EA is taking here? Let us know in the comments!
