What is going on with PvP MMR and 94/166 opponent selection?

MarvelMan

Trisul wrote:

MarvelMan wrote:

The issue is how abrupt the walls are. The climb should be more gradual, such that if you are transitioning 2* to 3* you see similar teams. Currently that only happens below about 300 points. After that its max 2*s til 500/600 or so, then straight to maxed 3*s.

It actually sounds about right, mirroring the general groupings of the playerbase. There's probably a large congregation of maxed 2* players and another big group of 3* players, with much smaller pools of players that main underleveled 3* between. For most of the 2* --> 3* transition, the 3* guys tend to not be useful until they pretty much have the covers they need to max them, and so their A-team tend to remain maxed 2*s until they can nearly max a 3*, which takes a long time.

I would agree that there are clusters at max for each star level, but I used to (prior to the last 4? weeks) see transition teams. If I tanked heavily, I could see the 1* to 2* teams, then max 2*s followed by 2* to 3* teams. Now its much, much, much more like a light switch. That either speaks to a dramatic change in the user progression patterns (if so, why? Tangent: I think this is somewhat true, as more people realize noncovered/nonmaxed chars are just about kick me signs due to being weak) or there has been a change to the way matches are presented.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Trisul wrote:

MarvelMan wrote:

The issue is how abrupt the walls are. The climb should be more gradual, such that if you are transitioning 2* to 3* you see similar teams. Currently that only happens below about 300 points. After that its max 2*s til 500/600 or so, then straight to maxed 3*s.

It actually sounds about right, mirroring the general groupings of the playerbase. There's probably a large congregation of maxed 2* players and another big group of 3* players, with much smaller pools of players that main underleveled 3* between. For most of the 2* --> 3* transition, the 3* guys tend to not be useful until they pretty much have the covers they need to max them, and so their A-team tend to remain maxed 2*s until they can nearly max a 3*, which takes a long time.

I would agree that there are clusters at max for each star level, but I used to (prior to the last 4? weeks) see transition teams. If I tanked heavily, I could see the 1* to 2* teams, then max 2*s followed by 2* to 3* teams. Now its much, much, much more like a light switch. That either speaks to a dramatic change in the user progression patterns (if so, why? Tangent: I think this is somewhat true, as more people realize noncovered/nonmaxed chars are just about kick me signs due to being weak) or there has been a change to the way matches are presented.

I disagree with the non-maxed characters comment. I am not being attacked any more frequently than I used to and I still keep putting out a pair of 110s (usually Patch/Panther, Patch/Falcon or Cap/Hood depending on the featured).

My opinion is that they turned the spotlight direction. To be clearer, prior to the wall, my battles are all worth less than 23 points, meaning my opponents have less points than I do. After the wall, most battles are worth 25-40 points, meaning that now all the opponents have more points than I do.

When I have 500 points, it seems as if it only looks for opponents with 350 to 450 points to match me up with. However, once I cross to 550, it only looks for opponents from 600 to 900 points. By doing this it skips a lot of opponents in the middle, many of whom are in the transition and helps to artificially deflate scores to keep the hero points at 800 a rarer progression target

Unknown

I'm getting 2* and loaners when I start out and the opponents get more difficult slowly. At 400-600 they gradually change to 3* rosters, with the occasional 2* slipping in, but not maxed, or only partially. i also get hit a lot less, so I bother with shields a lot less. From 700 to 800 onward or so it's back to as it was. Last PvP I was having a hard time finding opponents worth enough points while shield-hopping, but I did make it to 1025 without a problem (couldn't be bothered to go further).
Altogether, I'm not complaining.

Unknown

So I waded into this thread and understand some, but not all, of it. It's nice to see some of the analysis of the "wall" problems as I've been experiencing it for a few months. I have about ten maxed two-star characters, and about four mid-ranked three- and four-star characters. Like many others, I will climb up the ranks in a PvP event quickly and then hit the wall where I only have opponents that are better than me.

In addition to the characters mentioned above, I have another dozen three- and four-stars with only one or two skills. These are characters that seem to drop less often, like She-Hulk or Beast. But I liked being a Junior Pokemon Collector and spent my Hero Points on extra slots.

My question then, to you, my brave min-maxers, is this: Are the barely-leveled-up characters hurting my ranking and forcing me to fight stronger opponents? Is the system looking at what my abilities would be _IF_ I had them fully-ranked? And then is there anything I can do to help this other than dropping said characters?

Unknown

isoHuckster wrote:

My question then, to you, my brave min-maxers, is this: Are the barely-leveled-up characters hurting my ranking and forcing me to fight stronger opponents? Is the system looking at what my abilities would be _IF_ I had them fully-ranked? And then is there anything I can do to help this other than dropping said characters?

No
No
Do not drop 3 stars and nothing to be done to avoid the wall.

All answers to the best of my knowledge, but nothing about the Calvinball rules of MMR is for sure or constant

XandorXerxes

I registered specifically to throw in my voice on this issue, as it's incredibly frustrating.

I have 2 maxed 2* characters, 2 3* characters at level 91 and one at 89, and one 3* character with a cap at 104 but who is at least 30 levels out (Loki).

It's incredibly hard for me to get any new 3* covers. Part of it is that my luck is usually terrible, but this season has been brutal on me. I can usually break into the top 100 (I max out just under 600 points usually), but near the end of the event I'm beaten down by level 130+ characters to the ~120 range. I'm usually running the loaner or a level 60-80 version I have, haven't been fortunate enough to find an event with my main 3*s yet... but this season I've managed to place one 3* cover in versus mode. I'd love to get Sentry this tournament, but I doubt it will happen.

With my luck from solo tokens pretty miserable and the versus being pretty much a wall for me, I've only been able to get 3* or the occasional 4* tokens from getting 10-packs as 4000 point season rewards. That method is just way too slow for me and the versus wall way too frustrating for me to keep this up. I was able to place top 10 once and top 25 many seasons ago, but without some way to reliably get top-100 (or reliably earn a 3* cover) I am quite literally stuck. I can occasionally get a 3* cover from a story mission but playing with the same few weak characters and getting battered down to more covers that are only worth the 250-iso I can sell them for (I'd usually rather have the 3 standard tokens from placing several hundred places back) is getting old.

Until this gets changed, if it ever does, do you guys have any advice that can help me actually make progress?

Thanks!

Unknown

If you can get 550-600 points, you should be able to join a top100 alliance (at least top250), which will add hero points and covers to your efforts. Check the alliance section of the forums and find a good fit for you.

To regularly finish in the top100 or higher, it takes shields (and a bit of planning). For example, in my case.

Wednesday event ends at noon - try to finish Tuesday around 500-550. Start play around 8:30. Push hard, use good characters, healthpacks until I am out or attacks are coming too fast. 3 hour shield, check in around 11:50 to see if I need to attack one more time for a reward level Friday event ends at midnight - try to finish Thursday around 450-500. Gradually creep up all day to around 600 points at 3:00. Push hard, put on an 8 hour shield, enjoy my family time

My shield budget is 150 per event, but I usually spend 225 or 300 a week. Frequently my push on Sunday is so late, I don't need to shield. I make 125 to 150 in hero points each event (25 for 400 and 600, 50 for alliance, 25 or 50 for individual placement), so I come out a little bit ahead on PvP. This season I have been between 577 and 760, with 5 top50s in 7 events (unfortunately 26th, 26th, and 27th in 3 of the last 4 events). Hope that helps

Unknown

This game's been out for a long time and getting 2 maxed 166s isn't really that hard. You only need 2 because most people don't really care whether your Dr. Octopus is a loaner or maxed. In fact since he has a green power you can argue a loaner (which won't have green) is likely stronger than a maxed one for all practical purposes. I can't remember the last time I shielded so my PvP record should be considered as spectcularly bad by the game's standards since I just get pounded by everyone but that hasn't stopped the game starting with max rosters at 0 points. Sometimes at around 300 to 600 the opposition inexplicably gets way easier but I've yet to find any consistent pattern there.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

This game's been out for a long time and getting 2 maxed 166s isn't really that hard.

It took me about 5 months to get 13 covers for 1 3 star character. I wouldn't call that a walk in the park. Currently on day 212 and have 5 characters with 13 covers. By choice, I do not yet have a 166. Overall for the 27 3 star characters, I have 215 out of the 342 covers (63%), but because of the dilution of the 3star level, with a new character each fortnight, 13 covers for a specific character takes a lot more work than it did in the days of Villian LR handing out covers or when there were only 10 options when a token showed gold.

Unknown

Also keep in mind that there is still the whole puzzle component - you can cascade into or out of a top 100/25/10 placement, even with a great roster. Happened to me with the Doc Ock event - three bad boards in a row and lucky cascades for the AI. It happens - but if covers only come around so often in PVP events, you have to wait a LONG time before you can get more for your favored/higher characters. And since they keep adding three star characters, you'll get less and less of a chance of getting those characters you need.

They should maybe start doing multiple PVP events - let people choose what they'd like to work on.

Unknown

RefinedBean wrote:

Also keep in mind that there is still the whole puzzle component - you can cascade into or out of a top 100/25/10 placement, even with a great roster. Happened to me with the Doc Ock event - three bad boards in a row and lucky cascades for the AI. It happens - but if covers only come around so often in PVP events, you have to wait a LONG time before you can get more for your favored/higher characters. And since they keep adding three star characters, you'll get less and less of a chance of getting those characters you need.

They should maybe start doing multiple PVP events - let people choose what they'd like to work on.

The puzzle element of this game is fairly irrelevent compared to the power boosts and shields bring. Sure I don't really use them anymore so I know what you're talking about but if I still cared about PvP I wouldn't be leaving anything to chance. At the very least I'd be running the iso 8 boosts on every fight and certainly would be shielding instead of taking a minus 500 point hit like I usually do.

If there are multiple PvP events people will just complain not being able to do well in all of them. You'll just have even more health pack conspiracy posts and it'd also result in giving away more prizes in a given time compared to usual, yet for no noticeable gain. Just looking at all the competition for useless 3* covers that can't be of any relevance to the guys putting that kind of score and you'll see that 'walk away' is not an option for most people.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The puzzle element of this game is fairly irrelevent compared to the power boosts and shields bring. Sure I don't really use them anymore so I know what you're talking about but if I still cared about PvP I wouldn't be leaving anything to chance. At the very least I'd be running the iso 8 boosts on every fight and certainly would be shielding instead of taking a minus 500 point hit like I usually do.

If there are multiple PvP events people will just complain not being able to do well in all of them. You'll just have even more health pack conspiracy posts and it'd also result in giving away more prizes in a given time compared to usual, yet for no noticeable gain. Just looking at all the competition for useless 3* covers that can't be of any relevance to the guys putting that kind of score and you'll see that 'walk away' is not an option for most people.

These are all fair points - why would they give away more prizes? Hadn't thought of that.

I've been trying to shield every PVP and it's depleting my HP pretty significantly. I'll eventually trend towards 0 and that's when you're supposed to buy some more, I suppose - but it seems like there are others who don't spend significant amounts who can set themselves up to "coast," kind of like papa07 detailed above. I'm finding this extremely hard to do, as most transitioning people are.

The iso-8 boosts are a bit easier to afford but still rough.

I'll be honest: I love MPQ. Play it every day. But it's rapidly becoming a game where you have to make decisions involving all these in-game resources (Do I use HP to shield with a PVP, or spend on more health packs for the PVE? Do I spend iso on boosts, or leveling the new covers I just got) - and that just doesn't scream Puzzle Quest to me.

This is why, in my opinion, people loved the Gauntlet, bad rewards aside: It felt like a Puzzle Quest game. This is why the new "story" content can't come soon enough - and it shouldn't have a time limit. It should just be another huge story that you can play through at your leisure. But that's off-topic and I'll let it go.

Unknown

RefinedBean wrote:

These are all fair points - why would they give away more prizes? Hadn't thought of that.

I've been trying to shield every PVP and it's depleting my HP pretty significantly. I'll eventually trend towards 0 and that's when you're supposed to buy some more, I suppose - but it seems like there are others who don't spend significant amounts who can set themselves up to "coast," kind of like papa07 detailed above. I'm finding this extremely hard to do, as most transitioning people are.

The iso-8 boosts are a bit easier to afford but still rough.

I'll be honest: I love MPQ. Play it every day. But it's rapidly becoming a game where you have to make decisions involving all these in-game resources (Do I use HP to shield with a PVP, or spend on more health packs for the PVE? Do I spend iso on boosts, or leveling the new covers I just got) - and that just doesn't scream Puzzle Quest to me.

This is why, in my opinion, people loved the Gauntlet, bad rewards aside: It felt like a Puzzle Quest game. This is why the new "story" content can't come soon enough - and it shouldn't have a time limit. It should just be another huge story that you can play through at your leisure. But that's off-topic and I'll let it go.

It's hard to coast because people don't analyze playing logically. People probably think since they're being road killed by the Sentry/X Force teams that you got to build up your roster to fight back. That doesn't actually work. If your strongest character is Psylocke or even Punisher you're still always road kill for the typical top team. You might be better against other mid range teams but it doesn't matter because there are plenty of top teams that are looking for an easy kill and you'd be one of them until you can match them. Right now to have even a chance at deterring a top team you need The Hood + one heavy hitter (Sentry/X Force/Thor/BP, roughly in that order). Note that just having one of those two isn't enough because without a heavy hitter, The Hood is not dangerous, and without The Hood, an opponent with The Hood can shut down your heavy hitter as long as it's not Sentry (who is much faster than the other heavy hitters, but will still get slowed down).

What you should do is accumulate HP/iso from the threshold rewards and then either use the HP to upgrade the covers, or save a large amount of HP (say, 1000) to make a serious push whenever one of the big guns is offered in a PvP event. Those random 3* sitting at a lowish level with 3/3/3 covers aren't going to help you in most PvP events, and if you're constantly spending all your iso in trying to climb then you won't even be able to put some kind of fake deterrent. That is, let's say Psylocke's featured in an event that offers Sentry, and you spent a lot of effort getting all the cover you can so she's 4/4/4 but you're low on iso so you can only raise her to level 60, so you appear to have a level 90 (after boost) Psylocke with 4/4/4. Now if you spent less you might have Psylocke at 3/3/3 but with extra iso on hand, so you can pump her to say level 100 and she'd appear as a level 150 in this event, which looks almost like a usable character. It doesn't matter if your covers suck because a level 150 Psylocke still looks scarier than a level 90 Psylocke and very few people are going to check the exact covers you have, but you got to have spare iso on hand to be able to fake this kind of stuff.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

What you should do is accumulate HP/iso from the threshold rewards and then either use the HP to upgrade the covers, or save a large amount of HP (say, 1000) to make a serious push whenever one of the big guns is offered in a PvP event. Those random 3* sitting at a lowish level with 3/3/3 covers aren't going to help you in most PvP events, and if you're constantly spending all your iso in trying to climb then you won't even be able to put some kind of fake deterrent. That is, let's say Psylocke's featured in an event that offers Sentry, and you spent a lot of effort getting all the cover you can so she's 4/4/4 but you're low on iso so you can only raise her to level 60, so you appear to have a level 90 (after boost) Psylocke with 4/4/4. Now if you spent less you might have Psylocke at 3/3/3 but with extra iso on hand, so you can pump her to say level 100 and she'd appear as a level 150 in this event, which looks almost like a usable character. It doesn't matter if your covers suck because a level 150 Psylocke still looks scarier than a level 90 Psylocke and very few people are going to check the exact covers you have, but you got to have spare iso on hand to be able to fake this kind of stuff.

Look at the size of this paragraph (and I'm not saying it's not a good explanation - it is, and I very much appreciate it). Look at it.

I shouldn't need an associate's degree to do well and get rewards in a Puzzle Quest game, even in a PVP event. There's something broken about MPQ and I don't know if it'll ever be fixed. Ostensibly, PVE should be the remedy for this, but PVE has its own gamesmanship and it can be just as frustrating as the PVP events.

This is why the wall that is the genesis of this thread is so a) aggravating and b) inexplicable. This isn't Dwarf Fortress - why is there suddenly a tremendously complicated meta-game going on in a game about matching three gems and using super powers? What the hell? The game goes away from the I play more - I get more - I can do more model. Not just because it's Free to Play, but because it places seemingly arbitrary limits on things. Timed events. The 94/166 wall. Roster limits. It's exasperating. And then I see explanations like the one above and it makes me wish that there was no PVP - because who wants to bother with that mess? Who has the time?

It's a rhetorical question, though - tons of people, I guess. But it's just head-scratchingly puzzling. Is this frustration and the creation of the meta game by design? I hope not.

Trisul

RefinedBean wrote:

Look at the size of this paragraph (and I'm not saying it's not a good explanation - it is, and I very much appreciate it). Look at it.

I shouldn't need an associate's degree to do well and get rewards in a Puzzle Quest game, even in a PVP event. There's something broken about MPQ and I don't know if it'll ever be fixed. Ostensibly, PVE should be the remedy for this, but PVE has its own gamesmanship and it can be just as frustrating as the PVP events.

This is why the wall that is the genesis of this thread is so a) aggravating and b) inexplicable. This isn't Dwarf Fortress - why is there suddenly a tremendously complicated meta-game going on in a game about matching three gems and using super powers? What the hell? The game goes away from the I play more - I get more - I can do more model. Not just because it's Free to Play, but because it places seemingly arbitrary limits on things. Timed events. The 94/166 wall. Roster limits. It's exasperating. And then I see explanations like the one above and it makes me wish that there was no PVP - because who wants to bother with that mess? Who has the time?

It's a rhetorical question, though - tons of people, I guess. But it's just head-scratchingly puzzling. Is this frustration and the creation of the meta game by design? I hope not.

Making a competitive PvP game is complicated, and balancing such games is usually a nightmare, especially for f2p games that require money coming in to continue to exist. Player alienation is a constant menace. Matchmaking and bracketing is a pretty complicated piece to unravel completely and it doesn't surprise me in the least that it's the most controversial.

MPQ is hardly the game to put on a pedestal for how to do f2p right, but definitely isn't the worst offender out there and remains reasonably fun. You may have to be aware of these metagames to maximize progression, but it's not required to enjoy the game and progress at a slower pace.

Unknown

Although I'm not supportive of the generic F2P model, MPQ is a case where being generous ends up backfiring because they didn't think about what it means. If this game was on the typical energy system it'd just be you get to play 10 games in PvP and then you're done for the next 8 hours or insert $1 to continue. It wouldn't matter if you won or lost every one of those games because the energy system is a hard cap that cannot be bypassed. Well, MPQ doesn't work like that. The number of games you can play is actually dependent on your skill, roster strength, and some hocus pocus with scaling/MMR. It probably ends up being too many games for what a typical F2P should be. Now does this mean MPQ should be greedy? No, but if you can only play 10 games every 8 hours a lot of the weird problems of PvE/PvP would never even be possible, and D3 never really thought about what it means when you don't just slap a hard play limit like most F2Ps.

It's kind of like how in PvE when they changed it to where doing one cycle every 2H 24M is most optimal they must have thought 'how many people would be as crazy as that?' and the answer turns out to be 'a lot'. There's just all kinds of crazy things people end up doing if you let them do it. Why do people Sentry bomb for 2XXX scores that is totally meaningless in terms of trying to win stuff? No idea, but it's a reality we've to deal with. I'm guessing the PvP model is just that 'not everyone can always win', but as can be seen on this forum, walking away is awfully hard for most people.

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

Making a competitive PvP game is complicated, and balancing such games is usually a nightmare, especially for f2p games that require money coming in to continue to exist. Player alienation is a constant menace. Matchmaking and bracketing is a pretty complicated piece to unravel completely and it doesn't surprise me in the least that its the most controversial.

MPQ is hardly the game to put on a pedestal for how to do f2p right, but definitely isn't the worst offender out there and remains reasonably fun. You may have to be aware of these metagames to maximize progression, but it's not required to enjoy the game and progress at a slower pace.

Emphasis mine. This is the key - I don't think there's any progression appreciable progression without knowing the metagame, unless you are EXTREMELY lucky in a PVP event or manage to set up a good schedule for grinding a PVE (lord knows I want to wake up every two and a half hours, on a work night, to do some nodes!). There's a slower pace, and then there's waiting to get a 3* cover from a standard pack, and the daily awards. That's what...maybe three a month? Whoa boy, watch out.

Maybe my main complaint that, in my opinion (obviously, and lots will disagree with me), the continued emphasis on PVP in MPQ is problematic and alienating, AS IT'S STRUCTURED NOW. You hit the 94/166 wall and you're supposed to say "Huh...this got hard. I should throw some money at this." But I'm going to assume that a good amount of players just throw it aside and stop caring, because there's an entire metagame that they don't have time for. Hell, half the forum-ites here don't have time for it. Am I going to intentionally lose so that I can maximize my MMR or whatever? Why would I intentionally lose in this game, or ANY game?

Unknown

RefinedBean wrote:

I've been trying to shield every PVP and it's depleting my HP pretty significantly. I'll eventually trend towards 0 and that's when you're supposed to buy some more, I suppose - but it seems like there are others who don't spend significant amounts who can set themselves up to "coast," kind of like papa07 detailed above. I'm finding this extremely hard to do, as most transitioning people are.

Coast as a description of my gameplay bothers me. I try to do more with less by understanding exploitable holes in gameplay. By trial and error, I have learned that if I stop at 575 the last night of PvP, I will take 1 or 2 hits overnight for no more than -35. But if I go up to 625, I will take 6-12 hits for -200. When you learn the limitations of your roster, there is no need to shield overnight, which allows for positive hp for an event.

You have to set your expectations properly to be able to do this. This is a marathon approach, where my event goal is top50, but where I can push and even shield hop a little for top25 if the second cover is worth it.

Unknown

RefinedBean wrote:

Maybe my main complaint that, in my opinion (obviously, and lots will disagree with me), the continued emphasis on PVP in MPQ is problematic and alienating, AS IT'S STRUCTURED NOW. You hit the 94/166 wall and you're supposed to say "Huh...this got hard. I should throw some money at this." But I'm going to assume that a good amount of players just throw it aside and stop caring, because there's an entire metagame that they don't have time for. Hell, half the forum-ites here don't have time for it. Am I going to intentionally lose so that I can maximize my MMR or whatever? Why would I intentionally lose in this game, or ANY game?

I'd be OK throwing more money at this if it could assist me in winning without costing a fortune. Currently I've spent money a few times when I didn't have enough hero points to enlarge my roster and there was a 3* that I wanted. (Laying out $5 once a month for a game I (generally) enjoy is pretty manageable.) My roster is now a bit bloated at 32!

But the cash required to, say, take my Punisher from 6 skills to 13 or The Hood from 4 to 13 is a lot more than I can justify.

I am sure that there are people that do this. At the height of Farmville's popularity I remember reading news articles about people spending hundreds of dollars per month on their virtual crops.

Unknown

The game's designed such that money doesn't help very much to discourage you from approaching this like a P2W. Even if you spend thousands of dollars on this game, stuff like scaling/MMR would ensure you'll not get very far without devoting a ton of time. This is rather different from the generic P2W game where if you spent that kind of money you'll most definitely easily stomp over the guys who do not.

The problem here is that in an effort to make the game not very P2W then the question becomes 'so why would you spend money at all?' If spending money doesn't help you win the game, why spend it at all? The game's underlying competitive model is that you simply can't always win no matter who you have, but if you can't always or even usually win, why continue playing? This is something D3 never really figured out. I remember talking to a head dev of EQ1 why they think it's okay to design a game where you can't beat content from 3 years ago and he's like 'well not everyone can win' and of course the result of that is that people stop paying them a sub when you can't even beat stuff from 3 years ago by design. While MPQ isn't quite as bad I see that they really haven't thought about why people should continue to play once they realize that the game, by design, isn't something you can always win.