So... what the hell is up with matchmaking?

mjh

_RiO_ wrote:

I mean no personal offense and I understand it is well-meant advice but: screw that. We shouldn't have to resort to HP (and thus indirectly; money) guzzling tactics to progress just because D3P/Demiurge sucks at delivering an experience that has proper power progression. Spending boatloads of HP to compensate for that is like rewarding them for their incompetence.

(The worst part is that they've known the 2*->3* situation is a problem for months. Long before the true healing 'fix' landed. Yet they do nothing.)

this. so much this.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

I mean no personal offense and I understand it is well-meant advice but: screw that. We shouldn't have to resort to HP (and thus indirectly; money) guzzling tactics to progress just because D3P/Demiurge sucks at delivering an experience that has proper power progression. Spending boatloads of HP to compensate for that is like rewarding them for their incompetence.

(The worst part is that they've known the 2*->3* situation is a problem for months. Long before the true healing 'fix' landed. Yet they do nothing.)

I completely agree with you. I've stopped shield hopping myself, and will only shield if it's a cover I want and will come out net zero. The game has many issues with it. Realistically, these issues will most likely not get fixed. These issues might actually be what they consider to be "working as intended", since they want to encourage us to spend money. I've come to terms with the state of the game, how much effort I'm willing to put in, and what resources I use to get what I want. Doing so has relieved a lot of stress and brought me back from wanting to quit.

SnowcaTT

_RiO_ wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

No, it's like being 10, and your team just won the little league tournament, so your next match is against the New York Yankees. You can't tinykitty hit a 90-MPH fastball! You're 10!

QFT.
I mentioned this many times before, and it is always; always an established 3* veteran that shows up to complain about 'whining' and how you should just strategize better to climb to the top 100 for your 3* reward.
It's complete tinykitty, because it's impossible to keep up the required winning streak against maxed 3* veterans when you're just a 2* player or a 2* -> 3* transitioning player.

Once your MMR climbs high enough you're plain screwed. The only thing that helps? Tanking. And that doesn't do a whole lot of good if maxed 3* players are doing it as well (and are probably doing it more).

Absolutely. I rarely hit top 50 when that was the cutoff for rewards, but started getting it every time when it went to top 100. Then in S3, I hit many top 25's in a row: often at around 600 points. Now 750 isn't getting me into top 25.

There needs to be medium MMR buckets or something. I hit 600 points and suddenly it isn't 94/94, it's 166/166. Where are the 120/135 teams, the 3*'s going up? Or 94/118? Rarely do I see those. But even if I do, as others have mentioned: the 2* teams have about three teams to go with. Cap/Moonstone is a terrible 4th that only works before 300 points, Storm/Mags guarantees a retribution and I can only use it for points before 500. Wolvy/Daken as a bad third, Ares (Thor)/OBW, Thor/Storm.

And you know why Thor/Storm works? It's to terrify other 2* teams against retribution. One Call or Windstorm, and one of your very few teams is out for four hours. Without true healing, you simply cannot play very long. The back-to-back BP (if they had black) and Sentry made it worse, since both of those characters also had team damage abilities: I had a very difficult time running more than three matches at a time the entire event.

To the 3*'s that say "suck it up"...how many 3* characters were there when you started? Because they keep adding them, at the rate of one a month. The best way to get them is through the PVP events, but now there are twenty-three 3* characters! I don't think it is hard to top 100, and appreciate that D3 put the rewards down to that. The PVP events run for 2.5 days, but occasionally overlap: let's just say they run every 2 days for this math. Let's also assume you get ideal covers, never repeating for the thirteen you need. Let's assume you are getting two covers each time, one from alliance and one from top 100.

2 days per event x 23 3* characters = 46 days before you'll see the next cover of a pvp 3* (if they all get into rotation). Except they've added another 3* by then (and 2.5 is a better estimate): really you could use 2.5 x 24, 60 days. Let's go with the (overly high) assumption you see each character once every 45 days. 45 x 13 covers /2 (since you are getting two each time) = 292 days. Maybe your PVE and random drops accelerate that, but then again you'll double up on some covers so it might even out (and there are a couple two-cover characters that need 10 not 13)

I think it was Ice that said the plan was it takes some time to get a 3* maxed roster, so maybe a year is the plan? But let's go back in time a little bit with this same math. You 3*'s that started with say, 15 characters: 2x15 = 30 x 13/2 = 195. Just a few months ago! (-Capt. Marvel, Storm, She-hulk, Sentry, Daken, Torch, Falcon: those are all in the last few months right?) If they keep releasing the 3* covers at the same rate, the time to possibly go from 2* to 3* will continue to grow. In that year to get covered, there might be twelve new covers, making another half-year to try to get covered....

Sure, you don't have to max out every character. My highest two are Spidy and IM right now, horray! How far would that get me in the 3* brackets? You have to get the top few (Daken/Mags/Patch) going before having a legit chance. However, to beat the 2* rosters you can have almost any 3* roster (say around 120 or so). And instead of just a couple teams from a limited roster possibilities, you have tons of teams to choose from: even 4*'s after you have a few covers, a 120 Xforce is pretty intimidating to my team. But then, you get put in the 3* MMR bucket and you don't see many 2*'s I suppose.

So 2*'s have to continue on with the 2* roster for a LONG time, a time period that is getting longer all the time. MMR has to be fixed to give them a better chance to get into the 3* roster, and the 3* give-outs have to be higher. I don't think I should be top 10 right now, I don't try. That's fine, I'm not shooting for the 4* covers, I'm not there. But I do try to get top 25 to simply get the 3*'s faster: instead of being lined up against similar rosters, I have to try to out-compete 3* folks to get those 3* rewards that they already have. I do think the competition has been higher for Sentry/Captain Marvel, but BP and Cap? I don't know how new they are, are they still in demand?

If D3 MMR plan is to make top 10 really hard, that's fine. But they should put out more covers all the way down to 50. They should also drastically increase 3* drop rates out of heroic tokens. If you are going to make the 3* roster huge, make it obtainable. Also, give the 3*'s something more to shoot for: more 4*'s, and give them out as top 5 (or 10) rewards. I hear discontent from the 3* that have been here for awhile as well, because they have those 15 3*'s from a few months back: now they have to grind for months at a time before they get back to the newer 3* covers that they actually need, rather than being given the same ones again and again.

800 was almost always in top 10 for my brackets before, suddenly it has to be almost 1000. My character levels haven't changed. My win/loss percentage hasn't changed. The points I'm getting in each event hasn't changed. The only real change was days played and total levels of bench characters (ie: some my 3*'s are going from 70 to 80), which would be bizarre metrics to base MMR on.

-edit: that ended up longer than I thought it would. TLDR: So many 3*'s make the ability to get them much longer than it used to, and MMR placing 2*'s vs 3*'s doesn't help. Increase 3* rewards/drop rates!

Unknown

SnowcaTT wrote:

There needs to be medium MMR buckets or something. I hit 600 points and suddenly it isn't 94/94, it's 166/166. Where are the 120/135 teams, the 3*'s going up? Or 94/118? Rarely do I see those.

There are barely any of us (I'm one of the few who are). My varsity team (currently 19 of the 23 3*s) is right now all 139/140, and I almost never see anybody between 94 and 166. There are a few, but I basically need to either tank down to the 94s or get hit by a constant stream of 166s. Once true healing got instituted, I pretty much had to choose the first, because my work schedule means about 90% of my playing time during the week has to be 6-10 pm.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

There needs to be medium MMR buckets or something. I hit 600 points and suddenly it isn't 94/94, it's 166/166. Where are the 120/135 teams, the 3*'s going up? Or 94/118? Rarely do I see those.

There are barely any of us (I'm one of the few who are). My varsity team (currently 19 of the 23 3*s) is right now all 139/140, and I almost never see anybody between 94 and 166. There are a few, but I basically need to either tank down to the 94s or get hit by a constant stream of 166s. Once true healing got instituted, I pretty much had to choose the first, because my work schedule means about 90% of my playing time during the week has to be 6-10 pm.

The reason is simple. Most players with many 3*s don't touch the non-maxed 3*s unless they have to with few exceptions being featured in pvp/pve or LR. And some of the best 3* are ones that have been around a long long time now. It just doesn't make sense to ever use a 120 3* when a 166 3* is so much better.

As far as bringing in new players to MPQ- this is important or the game will be overly top-heavy to the point where it's no longer fun - need the constant flow of players at each tier

HailMary

Having recruited a pretty new 2* player into our alliance, it's undoubtedly hard for 2* players to place very well in PVP. Non-manic shield-hopping is definitely the go-to-strategy for high placement, especially if you're placed into a death bracket. That said, my Sentry bracket, which was pretty lethal by any measure, had #8 at 1100+ but #10 at 870. In comparison, our 2* player scored 875 in the previous Sentry-rewarding PVP, which got him a 3/5/4 Sentry as his one standout 3*.

Yes, MMR is broken, and it's not just 2* players who sometimes see the same 5 3xL166 opponents on endless rotation. But, progression still happens, and the same tricks for past transitioners generally apply to current transitioners, but certainly more harshly this time around (this is after talking to several current transitioners): selectively use shields for specific covers you want, do well in PVE, try to join a T100 alliance, and try to get every event token you can (the tokens suck, but except for the one at 900, they're generally quite achievable and better than nothing).

Expalphalog wrote:

A part of the problem right now is that people want Sentry, Patch, and Captain Marvel. This means that more people are competing and at a higher level. So yeah, to my fellow 2*s and transitioners - we're boned.

If it's any consolation, most 3* players probably don't need Patch. I started actually playing Events a good while after the Great Patch Giveaway, and I've managed to get maxed Patch already. Marv-for-Patch shouldn't be hellish like Sentry-for-Marv, not just because Patch's undesirability balances the 1100 cover, but also because Marv isn't a one-man wrecking ball that many have already maxed.

Unknown

Yeah, I just started playing a week ago and already I'm against L150+ teams.

Unknown

In my opinion the matchmaking should be 100% random. Yes, I realize that this means higher leveled teams can prey on lower leveled teams, but that's the choice they earned when they played hard and ranked up. The amount of points you get for a win should be based by the amount of points the other team has won, or something similar, in order to encourage fairness, but ultimately it should be there choice.

I used to rank in the top 25 with a 1* team, and placed top 10 frequently. I figured I could buy some cover packs for that extra boost to get top 5 more often, or maybe even 1st. Wrong. I bought some cover packs, and now I use a 2* and 3* team. I rarely get better than top 100 now. So, what exactly did I get by giving them my money? A higher difficulty and a lesser chance for rewards.

By the way, does anyone from D3 contribute to, or at least read these forums, or are they purely community driven?

y2fitzy

Yeah it's a nonsense really. I've only been playing a couple of days so have a very amateur deck, and my only options now on the Storm PVP are people with 3* Wolverines and the rest. Blasted through a bunch of similar level people at the start and managed to get top 100, but now I'm just sat here debating whether I should lose a crapload of battles on purpose just for the chance to face someone I stand a chance against

Unknown

Im on day 147 myself and noticed MMR has gone to ****... Last few PVP's i've been hitting the lv 166 wall at around 450 - 500 points as well and its super frustrating, to the point im about ready to rage quit...

Nothing i've done is bringing it back down including getting low scores / tanking etc, so something needs to be sorted out, coz as some have pointed out, they tweaked somethig and now MMR is seriously messed up...

So D3, if you guys are reading this, pls sort this out before you wnd up losing your whole player base!!!

Unknown

Naked-Pimp wrote:

Im on day 147 myself and noticed MMR has gone to ****... Last few PVP's i've been hitting the lv 166 wall at around 450 - 500 points as well and its super frustrating, to the point im about ready to rage quit...

Nothing i've done is bringing it back down including getting low scores / tanking etc, so something needs to be sorted out, coz as some have pointed out, they tweaked somethig and now MMR is seriously messed up...

So D3, if you guys are reading this, pls sort this out before you wnd up losing your whole player base!!!

Yes, same. My wall comes in about 600 points, but you have to have at least that, even to be in top 50, to get one cover and HP. What is even frustrating, is that many of those have the reward cover hero maxed too, so they dont need the covers, just points to add alliance score. There should be some different bracets or something for those maxed out veterans, with different rewards, it must be frustrating to them too fight for rewards they dont need.

Unknown

The funny thing is that those lvl 166 players complain about "extreme sharding" etc, because there's not enough of us low level targets in their brackets. From the devs perspective: I think this is by design to intentionally limit the amount of time you play unless you pay. Generally, once you hit that wall, you pretty much have to switch to a different tourney or pve for the time being if you don't want to pay to play.

Unknown

Miaomew wrote:

Naked-Pimp wrote:

Im on day 147 myself and noticed MMR has gone to ****... Last few PVP's i've been hitting the lv 166 wall at around 450 - 500 points as well and its super frustrating, to the point im about ready to rage quit...

Nothing i've done is bringing it back down including getting low scores / tanking etc, so something needs to be sorted out, coz as some have pointed out, they tweaked somethig and now MMR is seriously messed up...

So D3, if you guys are reading this, pls sort this out before you wnd up losing your whole player base!!!

Yes, same. My wall comes in about 600 points, but you have to have at least that, even to be in top 50, to get one cover and HP. What is even frustrating, is that many of those have the reward cover hero maxed too, so they dont need the covers, just points to add alliance score. There should be some different bracets or something for those maxed out veterans, with different rewards, it must be frustrating to them too fight for rewards they dont need.

That is very true, you see all these top lv 166 players with all the characters maxed out and you cant help but think how much of a waste it is for them to come top 25, when all they are going to do is dump them for ISO when all us 2* and 2* - 3* transition players actually need / want those covers...

daibar wrote:

The funny thing is that those lvl 166 players complain about "extreme sharding" etc, because there's not enough of us low level targets in their brackets. From the devs perspective: I think this is by design to intentionally limit the amount of time you play unless you pay. Generally, once you hit that wall, you pretty much have to switch to a different tourney or pve for the time being if you don't want to pay to play.

Well to be fair, i think they should honestly expect to be matched with other lv 166 players, after all, 99% of the time they dont need these covers, and probably have stashes of thousands of HP just sitting there waiting to be used, so why not let us lower rank players play in our own bracket for a chance to win top 5-25
..,

Eitherway, i have a feeling if this goes on, they may lose out on a lot of players, i know i have a few friends that were planning on spending money and are now thinking twice because of the way the game is programmed...

MarvelMan

Part of the explanation for this is that a lvl 128 3* is going to get beaten and pillaged just as bad as a lvl 94 2*, usually worse as the lvl 94 is at max damage/hp. As a result it doesnt make sense to dump ISO to a non cover maxed 3* until they have at least 11 of the covers, often 12, which can be VERY hard for a F2P 2* player as it requires routinely placing well in PVE AND PVP plus getting lucky with token pulls. Getting those last 4 covers F2P can be agonizing.

During my personal 2* -> 3* transition there was definitely a tough stretch where it was difficult to pull any 3* covers and my iso stock went over 400k as I just didnt have anyone to dump it to. Now, Im firmly in 3* territory and am regularly winning 3* covers so Im iso poor again. Of course, its still incredibly rough to get the last covers for the new chars, as that is by design to "force" people to pay. Which is why my Sentry/Laken/Ororo/HT/She-Hulk are sitting around 10 covers and lvl 40.....and since the first two are just about required at the top end of PVP for shield hopping (essentially P2P level) I have to be content with top 10 finishes and getting lucky with tokens for those missed reward covers as well as finishing the chars off.

As for sharting, its not about the match ups for individual battles: the extreme piece is the points needed for placement. Until you end up in one of those brackets you probably dont fully get it. I dont recall what event it was, but I was in one bracket where top 10 required excess of 1400pts.

People entrenched in 3* land DO expect to see 3*. I get the same match ups (166/166/249 with occasional outlier) whether Im in one of the extreme sharted brackets or not, generally starting at pretty low levels (sub 100 pts). What I dont want to see is people in 2* land achieving 1k points and beating me out for 3* covers I need, and better season standing, because they never saw 3* teams. At some level (maybe ~700pts?) everyone should be available as targets for everyone else, and I think this probably is being done. Ive noticed that in events where I only have the featured char partially covered that I stop seeing the sub 100 featured chars around 500 pts and start getting worked over by maxed featured teams much more frequently around 700 pts.

HailMary

Miaomew wrote:

Yes, same. My wall comes in about 600 points, but you have to have at least that, even to be in top 50, to get one cover and HP. What is even frustrating, is that many of those have the reward cover hero maxed too, so they dont need the covers, just points to add alliance score. There should be some different bracets or something for those maxed out veterans, with different rewards, it must be frustrating to them too fight for rewards they dont need.

Vets are already getting sharded into insane death brackets. It's pretty absurd. But, I do agree that a separate set of rewards for veteran death brackets would be a very welcome addition.

Naked-Pimp wrote:

Well to be fair, i think they should honestly expect to be matched with other lv 166 players, after all, 99% of the time they dont need these covers, and probably have stashes of thousands of HP just sitting there waiting to be used, so why not let us lower rank players play in our own bracket for a chance to win top 5-25

I, and many other multi-L166 vets, barely buy any covers, which means that we just about "need" every fairly new cover. For example, I still need covers for She-Hulk, Mostorm, Marv, and DP (...and Lil Torch ).

daibar wrote:

The funny thing is that those lvl 166 players complain about "extreme sharding" etc, because there's not enough of us low level targets in their brackets.

PVP opponents aren't players simply drawn from your leaderboard bracket. Matchmaking and bracketing are separate affairs.

Twysta

I think I've found and been privee to d3's new method of reducing the quantity of top end (max 3* star roster'ed) players people are facing from the game...er I mean matchmaking!

Unknown

Can anyone help me understand why if I was shielded for over a half an hour I lost 38 points to an attacker just now?

GothicKratos

I've always assumed matchmatching worked on a kind of sliding scale. For me, when I first open a PvP event, there are the seed nodes, and from there until about 200 points I see a lot of level 20-30 1*-2* teams, then from 400-500 I see a lot of partially developed 2* teams, then after 500 until about 600 I usually see fully developed 2* teams. Now, after the 600 mark, I will admit, it jumps up to the aggravating level 166 teams, but I have always assumed that, by the time I reached the 600 mark, the people in that part of the bracket/pool are simply mostly that level. I expect once I break top 50 I would only play top 50 players, I would expect once I break top 20 I would only play top 20 players, so on and so forth.

I always play the PvP as soon as it starts up to the highest progression reward I can attain (recently 600 points) and let what happens happens until either later that night or the next morning and play myself back up to something that feels comfortable, rise and repeat until about three hours before the end of the event, in which I just grind and skip until I can't play anymore, and then at the last hour I return to grind my heart out. As it gets later into the events and there is more people playing, I find the table in which I find level 166 teams further out than they were when the event first started.

Do I make any substantial top? No, but realistically I shouldn't. My team isn't good enough to be top. It's gregarious to think that with a team of 2*s I should be getting anything above top 75 or so (and I think that's being generous imo). Is that "fair" or "healthy"? Probably not, but competitive environments are rarely healthy (see: League of Legends, Call of Duty, Starcraft). When I want to, I generally get a 3* cover (recently sometimes even two), which is fantastic in my opinion. Do you need to invest a lot of time? Totally, welcome to competitive environments, if it's not for you, there's the door (and if you spent money to try and be more competitive, I'm so sorry you invested before you truly knew what you were getting into - lesson learned - hopefully you didn't invest a lot).

In short, yes, the matchmatching is a bit sporadic, and could use a more gentle transition, and maybe it's a little illogical at times (why are level 166s attacking me when I have 400 points and I don't even see them in my nodes!?), but trust and believe, this could be far, far worse.

Xiltyn

GothicKratos wrote:

I've always assumed matchmatching worked on a kind of sliding scale. For me, when I first open a PvP event, there are the seed nodes, and from there until about 200 points I see a lot of level 20-30 1*-2* teams, then from 400-500 I see a lot of partially developed 2* teams, then after 500 until about 600 I usually see fully developed 2* teams. Now, after the 600 mark, I will admit, it jumps up to the aggravating level 166 teams, but I have always assumed that, by the time I reached the 600 mark, the people in that part of the bracket/pool are simply mostly that level. I expect once I break top 50 I would only play top 50 players, I would expect once I break top 20 I would only play top 20 players, so on and so forth.

I always play the PvP as soon as it starts up to the highest progression reward I can attain (recently 600 points) and let what happens happens until either later that night or the next morning and play myself back up to something that feels comfortable, rise and repeat until about three hours before the end of the event, in which I just grind and skip until I can't play anymore, and then at the last hour I return to grind my heart out. As it gets later into the events and there is more people playing, I find the table in which I find level 166 teams further out than they were when the event first started.

Do I make any substantial top? No, but realistically I shouldn't. My team isn't good enough to be top. It's gregarious to think that with a team of 2*s I should be getting anything above top 75 or so (and I think that's being generous imo). Is that "fair" or "healthy"? Probably not, but competitive environments are rarely healthy (see: League of Legends, Call of Duty, Starcraft). When I want to, I generally get a 3* cover (recently sometimes even two), which is fantastic in my opinion. Do you need to invest a lot of time? Totally, welcome to competitive environments, if it's not for you, there's the door (and if you spent money to try and be more competitive, I'm so sorry you invested before you truly knew what you were getting into - lesson learned - hopefully you didn't invest a lot).

In short, yes, the matchmatching is a bit sporadic, and could use a more gentle transition, and maybe it's a little illogical at times (why are level 166s attacking me when I have 400 points and I don't even see them in my nodes!?), but trust and believe, this could be far, far worse.

Right now in my bracket in the Storm event, the top player is the only one with a high level 3* roster and is just slightly over 900 points. Second place is at ~650 and has a roster similar to mine (8 maxed out 2*, with a couple partially covered 3*). Yet once I hit about 550, I was getting matched against high 3* teams that have around 600-650 that aren't even in my bracket. If I'm competing against people in my bracket for the rewards, why am I being matched against players that aren't even in my bracket? We should only be matched against people in our own bracket. To reuse the baseball metaphor brought up earlier, the way things are set up now is proving you're the best pitcher in the majors by striking out a bunch of little league players.

Spoit

Except that in this metaphor, the major league players are only being payed as much as the peewee players