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.


**UPDATE (11/16/14) - ElectroBlast

Apologies for the late update on this one. We've heard that some (if not all) have not received their tokens. We are working to resolve and should have an update (if not the fix) by tomorrow (11/17).

Unknown

Very nice! Thanks for posting something in advance letting people know to be on the lookout. I think most can agree that the MMR can use some work. It's good to see its being worked on. Looking forward to see the changes.

Thanks!

IamTheDanger

This right here. This is one thing that makes a game great. Asking actual players opinions and listening. I'll be sure to post any difference I notice. And thanks for info and notice.

Kiamodo

Thanks for the heads up! Hope everything goes as planned!

Unknown

"David wrote:

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 improves 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!

Hopes for the: I've already tapped skip for said name - won't see him again for the next 100 skips. . . . .

MojoWild

Sounds like we probably won't see Season VIII for a while then?

Unknown

Glad it's coming in offseason. Hopefully it helps transition players without tiny kittying veterans.

Also, while at it, remove sharding. Arbitrary is the only true fair method. It's unbiased. In other words, base it solely on entry time. At some point, the system needs to stop punishing people who play. Arbitrary is the fairest method.

Also, I continued to be amazed by the complete renaissance of those game in the last several months. I don't know what caused the paradigm shift, but it's the best thing players could have asked for.

CrookedKnight

I look forward to the 300-point 166 wall, followed by seed teams at 872 points. (But no earlier or later!)

unpouramor

Sounds interesting! Looking forward to the experience ^_^

Unknown

There has been a noticeable change in recent months as communication has gone from nonexistent, stumbled for a bit, but continued to grow. This new outlook of using the forums to gather information and feedback from your most devoted players is a valuable resource, and I am so glad to see it being used. I look forward to watching MPQ grow from being a good game to a great game.

Five years from now, I look forward to telling newbies to stop whining. "When I was your age, all events were the same. PvP and PvE that was still PvP. We didn't have Special Events, or Boss Battles, or Raid Events, or Alliance Wars. But we played anyway. Kids today."

Also, "When I started playing we didn't even have a Gauntlet PvE. Now you guys have Multi-Story Guantlets running 24/7. Kids today."

A man can dream, can't he?

P.S. This post reminded me of the time I told my 8 year old daughter that I was older than the Internet. The look on her face was priceless.

Unknown

Whether or not this change works, the announcement, as well as using the season breaks to test out new mechanics, are both very encouraging developments.

Unknown

Thanks for the update David, glad you are settling into your role well and the community is appreciating your efforts to keep us in the loop.

DrNitroman

"David wrote:

Moore"]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.

I really like the improvement in communication but what I like even more it's that we are asked to beta test and send feedbacks.
Better than throwing stealth changes and in turn generating a thread full of (our) complaints, no?
Congrats to the devs, you're on the right track, I mean it!

Unknown

This is interesting. I look forward to seeing the changes. Hopefully this lightens the competition on 94 teams.

JamieMadrox

Devil's Advocate here, but I don't see the problem with MMR now. I win a lot of matches. I place highly in lots of events. It only makes sense that I be matched against better teams earlier until the game is a challenge again. The fact that I can hit 900-1000 points in one push with just 5 heals and a half dozen characters makes PVP pretty easy.

notamutant

Paintsville wrote:

There has been a noticeable change in recent months as communication has gone from nonexistent, stumbled for a bit, but continued to grow. This new outlook of using the forums to gather information and feedback from your most devoted players is a valuable resource, and I am so glad to see it being used. I look forward to watching MPQ grow from being a good game to a great game.

Five years from now, I look forward to telling newbies to stop whining. "When I was your age, all events were the same. PvP and PvE that was still PvP. We didn't have Special Events, or Boss Battles, or Raid Events, or Alliance Wars. But we played anyway. Kids today."

Also, "When I started playing we didn't even have a Gauntlet PvE. Now you guys have Multi-Story Guantlets running 24/7. Kids today."

A man can dream, can't he?

P.S. This post reminded me of the time I told my 8 year old daughter that I was older than the Internet. The look on her face was priceless.

Yeah... this game isn't going to be around 5 years from now. Do you seriously think the model is sustainable? By the very nature of the game, they need to keep adding characters to keep people playing and spending money, but it makes the barrier to entry for new players higher and higher. I doubt it can last more than another year without some sort of major reset or retooling so new players can actually enjoy the game.

Unknown

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Devil's Advocate here, but I don't see the problem with MMR now. I win a lot of matches. I place highly in lots of events. It only makes sense that I be matched against better teams earlier until the game is a challenge again. The fact that I can hit 900-1000 points in one push with just 5 heals and a half dozen characters makes PVP pretty easy.

I'm pretty sure 99% of the players can't hit 1000 points in 1 pvp push with just five heals.

Don't feed the trolls. They'll keep posting.

Unknown

My probably very unpopular opinion is that MMR should be very, very hard to figure out. It seems to me like the current system has two giant gaping flaws - people in transition from 2* to 3* being paired with people with all maxed 3*s and tanking.

One showcases a semi-broken aspect of the game, the other one allows you to game the system to a certain extent (in a really weird way too, most people seem to only have a really vague idea how it works).

Now the problem is that, with pvp being so much more rewarding than pve, MMR defines the best way to get all the best rewards in the game. This in turn means that if there is anything people will go into full scientist mode for, it's MMR.

So as much as I'd like to see the gears turning, I really think MMR is something that should be experimented with but not reported (unless you guys think you can find a completely bullet proof way to do it, which I assume will be hard as the tiniest of kitties)

One thing is for sure. Tanking for MMR needs to die. The "down and up for iso" aspect of it seems completely fine to me, great way to trade time for iso, but people shouldn't have big advantages over other players because they've read the forums and know about a flaw in the system.

wymtime

3 positives. Thanks for playing with MMR, telling us about it, and asking for our feedback.
1 opportunity. If I remember this PVP will have multiple villains buffed giving 2* the ability to play with 3*. This can throw off MMR and the algorithm you use. It might have been better to run a single 3* character buff to test it so you get more consistent results for the upcoming season.

Hopefully I am wrong and it will work regardless.

Spoit

wymtime wrote:

3 positives. Thanks for playing with MMR, telling us about it, and asking for our feedback.
1 opportunity. If I remember this PVP will have multiple villains buffed giving 2* the ability to play with 3*. This can throw off MMR and the algorithm you use. It might have been better to run a single 3* character buff to test it so you get more consistent results for the upcoming season.

Hopefully I am wrong and it will work regardless.

Yes pretty much this. The only thing is that I'm skeptical that this won't just be another 'gentle nudge' that looks good on paper, but wasn't actually tested for edge cases (which most of us are)

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

My probably very unpopular opinion is that MMR should be very, very hard to figure out. It seems to me like the current system has two giant gaping flaws - people in transition from 2* to 3* being paired with people with all maxed 3*s and tanking.

One showcases a semi-broken aspect of the game, the other one allows you to game the system to a certain extent (in a really weird way too, most people seem to only have a really vague idea how it works).

Now the problem is that, with pvp being so much more rewarding than pve, MMR defines the best way to get all the best rewards in the game. This in turn means that if there is anything people will go into full scientist mode for, it's MMR.

So as much as I'd like to see the gears turning, I really think MMR is something that should be experimented with but not reported (unless you guys think you can find a completely bullet proof way to do it, which I assume will be hard as the tiniest of kitties)

One thing is for sure. Tanking for MMR needs to die. The "down and up for iso" aspect of it seems completely fine to me, great way to trade time for iso, but people shouldn't have big advantages over other players because they've read the forums and know about a flaw in the system.

The MMR is based on ELO but ELO is not designed for a system where the chance of A beating B plus B beating A is significantly higher than 100%. Two Sentry bomb teams can have close to 200% on this sum and none of the assumptions of the ELO system makes any sense in such an environment, which means there's always going to be something wrong when you attempt to apply this system. Also ELO system tend to assume blind matches, as in you don't get to back out of a fight against someone with 400 lower rating that's also running the same Sentry bomb team, because otherwise it wouldn't be an accurate representation of player's strength if you can back out of a fight without penalty.