Upcoming Versus Matchmaking Test - (Updated**)

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Versus fans,

We wanted to give you as much advance word as we can that we'll be testing out a matchmaking change in the next Versus Event, Nefarious Foes, which begins Wednesday, November 12.

This will be a Beta test of sorts where we've made a tweak to the Versus matchmaking system in hopes that it will improve things for players. We don't mean to be coy, but we're not outlining what the changes are yet, as we're looking for unbiased reactions, positive or negative, to any differences you may notice.

Here's word from the designer of the change:

"Hey all, we're working on our Versus matchmaking algorithm and will be rolling out some tweaks over the next week so we can collect data on the results. To set expectations, this will not be a huge change but we're interested in hearing your unbiased observations of the changes. We also suspect it won't have any effect for some players. If you see anything different, please share your thoughts with us. We'll have more details later, and we'll share the results of the data we collect."

Because we'd like to get feedback quickly, before the next Versus Season begins - we're firing up the test in a few short days. If it works well, and players are pleased, we'll roll the change into the next Season. If reaction is overly negative, we can roll things back before the Season gets underway.

Thanks as always for your feedback!

*UPDATE (11/13/14)

Hi all,

We wanted to provide you with an update from the team at Demiurge regarding the Versus matchmaking test occurring in Nefarious Foes:

"Firstly, to everyone that provided feedback on their experience so far: THANK YOU. We're not just saying we're thankful, we're showing it by sending everyone that plays in the Event an Event Token for the next Versus Event. You'll receive it at the end of Nefarious Foes.

Secondly, we want to apologize for a mistake we made in the first few hours of this change.

We were too aggressive in setting a parameter that limits the extent to which strong teams will be matched with weaker teams. In a test environment, where there are fewer teams, you'd still see a good variety of matches, but on the live server, the band was too small, and players were matched exclusively with opponents very close to their level. We corrected this roughly three hours in, but a lot of folks had a sub-par experience and that's our fault.

We also apologize for running this test on an Event with a newer cover as the reward. We prioritized making sure that the test didn't affect a Season over other considerations, and wanted to make sure you had the chance to earn Mystique before her featured spot in the Simulator had passed.

Third, please keep playing Nefarious Foes and providing feedback! This is a live test, rather than on a test server because Versus matchmaking can perform very differently at scale, and its behavior can be sensitive to the way that players interact with it. We needed a test with lots of real players actively competing to understand the full impact. A test with a few forum players wouldn't have helped us understand how the changes affect new players, and likely wouldn't have caught the mistake we made in the first version of Nefarious Foes' matchmaking.

In news going forward, we released another update to the matchmaking today, but it looks like feedback has died down significantly. We're going to leave this change up until the end of Nefarious Foes because we need to know what the full impact throughout a Versus Event looks like. Once it wraps, we'll do an update with our findings. Let us know how this version compares to your experience in previous Versus Events!

One of the big problems we're trying to eliminate with these changes: at times under the old matchmaking system, low-level players (some with their best characters as low as level 40) could get into a situation where they were being matchmade mostly against high-level 3* teams (we'd expect that to happen if they had climbed to the top of the rankings, but this was happening before that point). So we're particularly interested to hear if you're seeing opponents that are much higher level than your best team (taking the Event buff into account). We're also trying to smooth out the difficulty curve, so that as you advance up the leaderboard, the difficulty of your opponents increases more evenly than before.

We realize we're extremely lucky to have such a dedicated, vibrant and attentive community. We absolutely do not take that for granted. We hope you'll join us when we make changes that improve the game for everyone. We fundamentally cannot improve Marvel Puzzle Quest without making changes. Versus matchmaking deserves to be better, and we want to work with the community to improve it.

Thanks again for your feedback, and thanks for playing."

**UPDATE: (11/14/14)

A quick addition to let everyone know that Beta testing will be ending shortly with the close of the Nefarious Foes Versus Event. Thanks very much for participating and for providing your valuable feedback. We got some great info that will help us moving forward. The current plan for now is that Season VIII matchmaking will be the same as Season VII.