Nefarious Foes - Matchmaking Test - Discussion

orionpeace

I will be changing the poll to reflect the change they made in matchmaking.

Here are the results from the original poll:

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

jtvincible wrote:

mikeydollar7 wrote:

For me this takes away all sense of progression and fun (which was already long gone from PvE). PvP is not supposed to be a 50:50 game from zero points up - I recall D3 saying before that players wanted to have some easier fights then progress to more difficult in order to enjoy playing. Even more so if you have invested time and/or money to build your roster.

I probably classify as a whale (maybe a small one!) and this has pushed me to uninstall - until D3 confirm the experiment is failed and finished. I have no desire to be a guinea pig!

For those who don't know, Mikey is one of the leaders of the x-men. You know, those guys who take first and second in every single PvP, and probably collectively spend more on this game than the bottom 80% combined. If Mikey is talking, hopefully devs are listening.

Progression? First few hundred points, then some more, then shield, then Sentry, then shield, then Sentry, then shield and so on and repeat- maybe throw in a random other character to amuse yourself. Repeat every 3 days. I guess that is progression in a sense.

Fun? Well, maybe, if the above is fun, each to their own, I guess.

Calling PvP progression and fun in any genuine sense of the words surely is a stretch... I guess it's a matching tiles game and given the other option is grinding PvE, maybe it is.

This one change that they clearly labelled as an experiment made you uninstall? That's all it took? There are no other reasons you ragequit and uninstalled given you are in a top alliance and all? Clearly it would have happened eventually then anyway.

Lol, let's look at it this way. If it's not fun and it costs money why would any of us do it?
Also, using your argument calling PVE progression is fun also a huge stretch with the current scaling system, at least for me and any other who has max xf and a bunch of other 3*. So basically the game is no fun in both pvp and pve and i should just quit if i have any sanity left in me?

About the new system, even after adustment it still more difficult to climb to 600 comapred to the old system since the opponent is tougher AND i got attacked more often. I'm not gonna comment on whether it's good or bad since obviously someone will always be unhappy regardless of what system. However, I would ask that if the system is making it more difficult for end-game players, perhaps the reward should also be adjusted accordingly?

In addition, another fun part for me in the old system is the chance to play with my rosters and testing different combinations while climbing to 600 if I start early, or 1000 if i start late, without using shield or boost. Now it seems like not using boost will costs me quite a few health packs. I don't know how it makes the game fair and fun?

To sum thing up, this new system is basically a punishment with 0 additional benefit. I seriously think D3 should rollback and reconsider implementing this new system all together.

Unknown

orionpeace wrote:

I will be changing the poll to reflect the change they made in matchmaking.

Mine are still all over the shop, so :"Providing a series of targets that make no sense" seems to be the only fit.

Anyone think the rewards for this will be scrapped as it seems very uneven? I have a feeling a "thanks for all your support, but this event was a mess so we are giving everyone a little something but not the full rewards" is incoming at the end of this?

Pylgrim

My experience: I have no trouble finding all kinds of opponents. However, they seem to be grouped neatly in three categories :

-Teams I can easily beat that give me 15-25 points
-Teams around my best team's level that give me 26-35 points
-Teams high above my best team's level that give me 36-41 points.

It seems that the system now presents teams to me solely dependant on my roster and my current points allowing me the choice of difficulty and rewards accordingly. I have got 500 points so far in two "pushes" without using health packs, by attacking the easy teams (from which I expect no retaliation as I will look to them as the "high about their level" tier.). I expect this scheme to continue into the 600s and above. In other words, instead of having a super easy climb into the 600s destroying easy teams for 30-40 points and then, find a wall of max-leveled teams, now I get to choose between a slow, but somewhat easy grind, or a high risk-high reward climb. I believe that this is a positive change as weaker teams now will only be hit by more powerful teams for 10 points or so, as opposed to the 30-40 from before.

If things remain like this, I expect that PVP will become a longer, slower, more grindy affair over the course of the whole event as opposed to a quick climb in the few last hours. I also expect that achieving 1000+ will be much more difficult, and hopefully progression rewards and season rewards will be adjusted accordingly.

MarvelMan

Im of a couple minds on this. I want to BLAST the implementation, and reserve judgement on the change.

This was a horrible event to use. While I appreciate the communication, not telling us anything about the goal (I get holding back on the how) still sucks. There are so many reasons this was a bad way to do it. In a lot of companies someone would get severely reprimanded for a screw up like this, if not fired. How was this allowed to make it to the wild this way?


Speaking to the actual change, here is my experience:
I started almost immediately trying to load seed teams. Yeah, didnt happen. I got 3x332 Laken/Hood/Sentry teams, even after skipping a dozen times. I saw one where a team had CMags vs Laken, and one where Laken was 310ish. My leaderboard was almost exclusively newer players without 3*s. Rather scared me for what it might indicate. PVE already penalizes those who improve their roster, PVP too? At least the points were decent, as those teams were all worth roughly 30 points. I trudged up to ~150 points and left it for a few hours, during which they rolled the tweak out.

After the tweak I didnt see a single max team, not even full maxed 2*s. Most offerings I had were teams just about at the max, using a maxed Ares plus some mix of level 80s (Jugg/OBW/Wolv/Venom). The downside was that they were all worth 14-17 points. I did some skipping and found a couple worth 20-21, so I took those hoping that it would affect my MMR and I would see better options. I think i saw one match that had 3*s, non-maxed, that was 26 points. I climbed to almost 300 and left it. Mostly because I fell asleep. I would have played more had that not happened. I didnt get hit overnight, and still see those teams this morning. I played a couple and got to ~340, where I sit now.

I ran a few skips right now, and see some high 100s to low 200 options but they are, still, worth fairly **** points (20-22). Ill play a bit more today and see if things change at all.

Professa D

ark123 wrote:

Okay so these are my nodes.

http://i.imgur.com/9eYrUj2.png
http://i.imgur.com/KSJs5dE.png
http://i.imgur.com/ucLVBK9.png

I just skipped once in each.
How does that make any sense.

Maybe they're actually giving us an easy, normal, and hard node now! Only problem is they're all worth 19-22 points. Hmmmm, this is a tough one......I think I'll go for the EASY one.

LOW RISK = LOW REWARD
HIGH RISK = HIGH REWARD

How hard is that really for them to understand?

killerkoala

When NF first start, i started few hours after tab opened, it was harsh where every team was super maxed. and afterwards they dialed down the mmr, it's gotten better. now after a few skip you get cornucopia of different team from your points range.

LordWill

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

LordWill wrote:

Let me say I've been following this and cannot believe some of the posts....

This is a test. They are TRYING to fix stuff that people have been whining about for months. It seems no matter what they do, people find a reason to complain.

They said this was a test, they have given everyone fair warning and asked for our help. They stated they could roll back the changes if need be and people are talking about quitting? Seriously?

They aren't going to be perfect but they have done a much better job of communicating and working on the game. Cut them some slack.

Furthermore the only way for them to test Matchmaking changes is to do something like this on a massive scale. Doing it on a small server with even 100 people wouldn't give them the information they need. Looking at what happens "in the real world" helps them to make "real world fixes".

Guys, they asked for our help. The least we can do is show them we care and help with feedback and constructive comments. We all want the game to be better.

Hypothetical. What do you think the reaction would be if Blizzard tried to fix a problem and ended up completely breaking WoW on a weekend with exclusive, rare rewards? Oh right, it wouldn't happen, because they have a test server. They know that it's not smart to implement incredibly volatile changes to how important elements within the game without testing them in-house first. This implementation is just awful.

I get what you are saying. I used to be the same way until it dawned on me that it was really how I was looking at it. Let me explain...

I've played EQ, WoW, DAOC etc etc for years and years. I looked at this game through those lenses of what they should and shouldn't do. They weren't conforming to MY expectations of what I thought they should be doing. When I realized that it was ME who had the problem (problem in sense they weren't doing things how I would do them) and changed my views, I came to terms with my MPQ experience. Trust me, I have had several bones to pick with the Dev team/Company.

MPQ is its own game. Once I just looked at it on its own merits and accepted what the game is, how the devs do things, how the company runs, it helped me to realize I was being unfair in the sense that they are doing their own game the way they see fit so I need to accept MPQ on their terms, not mine. I could choose to play or not play.

That doesn't mean I agree with everything and that the game couldn't be improved but I guess I am a little more tolerant of things now. They are trying to make the game better, there will be bumps, there will be bad decisions, there will be stupid mistakes. We are all human. But they are listening...

A lot of the vets have posted numerous times about issues and we felt like they fell on deaf ears (At least I thought so). It just feels like they are changing that.
I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything, thats not my intent. I just wanted to share my experiences and maybe it can help a few others enjoy the game a little more.

Unknown

orionpeace wrote:

I will be changing the poll to reflect the change they made in matchmaking.

Here are the results from the original poll:

This makes me happy I didn't join Nefarious Foes early.

Unknown

I'm guessing most people have no idea how the ELO system works for people to talk about high risk versus high reward. In any other game where the ELO system works like it's supposed to (chance A beating B + B beating A is 100%), someone who is worth 40 points has an 80% chance of beating you. Someone who is worth 45 points has 90% chance of beating you. Someone worth 30 points has 60% chance of beating you. What this change did is made the difficulty of the opponent slightly more inline with what the formula predicts. In general the ELO formula doesn't work for a game like this but it should not have been this far off from its predicted difficulty. In terms of placement everyone (at least within the same roster strength) is subject to the same pressures and I haven't seen conclusive data on 2*/transition to see if it's fair overall. Progression is obviously much harder but people seem to have forgotten that before shields nobody ever got to 1300. We're currently in a favorable progression in terms of what's achieveable but nobody was ever entitled to such, and history shows D3 doesn't particularly care if nobody ever got the progression rewards.

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

jtvincible wrote:

mikeydollar7 wrote:

For me this takes away all sense of progression and fun (which was already long gone from PvE). PvP is not supposed to be a 50:50 game from zero points up - I recall D3 saying before that players wanted to have some easier fights then progress to more difficult in order to enjoy playing. Even more so if you have invested time and/or money to build your roster.

I probably classify as a whale (maybe a small one!) and this has pushed me to uninstall - until D3 confirm the experiment is failed and finished. I have no desire to be a guinea pig!

For those who don't know, Mikey is one of the leaders of the x-men. You know, those guys who take first and second in every single PvP, and probably collectively spend more on this game than the bottom 80% combined. If Mikey is talking, hopefully devs are listening.

Progression? First few hundred points, then some more, then shield, then Sentry, then shield, then Sentry, then shield and so on and repeat- maybe throw in a random other character to amuse yourself. Repeat every 3 days. I guess that is progression in a sense.

Fun? Well, maybe, if the above is fun, each to their own, I guess.

Calling PvP progression and fun in any genuine sense of the words surely is a stretch... I guess it's a matching tiles game and given the other option is grinding PvE, maybe it is.

This one change that they clearly labelled as an experiment made you uninstall? That's all it took? There are no other reasons you ragequit and uninstalled given you are in a top alliance and all? Clearly it would have happened eventually then anyway.

Personally I don't comment on how other people play when I can't possibly know FWIW last PvP I got to 1100 for first shield with a few fun (yes fun!) retal wars on the way - without using sentry - and then a few hops to 1300 and that was it. I enjoyed gaining the first 1100 points more than the last 200.

I don't recall mentioning ragequitting either - I had no desire to play at all until they changed it which is exactly what I did. Had they made it a permanent change I would have quit due to lack of an enjoyable game mode for me. To me that's feedback which is what D3 requested.

nimvin

I started a few hours after the event opened. The difficulty range is pretty wide from easy to hard but im running a 544 hood, 415 cmags and 55 rags . My team is higher than just about everyone I see due to the villain buff. If I see a team of heros I just steamroll them and villains aren't too hard. Even xforce is a faceroll since cmags blue is hitting for 7k+. Honestly trying to judge difficulty on this event is a pretty poor idea. Should have just run the mystique pvp so everyone would be able to judge difficulty more easily. Rags red hits for 2k black hood is 2k and match dmg is obscene even without strike tiles. Im not mad and it seems ok its just very hard to make a sound judgement.

Unknown

All in all, I don't hate the changes. I've been around 600, no shields, some hard fights, some easy. I think I would have liked it more if there were no buffed characters in this experiment (well, if I had least one 166 villain hehe) but that would have let me use a wider range in my roster giving the devs more data. Right now I'm just finding teams with Laken and attacking with Hulk/xf

_RiO_

In the interest of determining whether the round of in-flight 'tweaking' David toted as the solution to this screwball MMR experiment actually did anything, I joined a bracket and played a bit.

For starters; all 3 opening teams were still widely overleveled compared to my roster, most being maxed 3*s where the highest I could offer was a lvl 110 Doctor Doom. Needless to say; I took a hit and joined the bracket by losing my first match. After that, I skipped each node about 5 times before realizing levels were not going to become better.

I chanced it and started playing against overleveled opponents selectively, just to check how far I'd be able to get...
I didn't manage to collect more than 100 points. Apparantly that was not a bad score at all, as it put me in the top 30 of the bracket.

The top 10 of said bracket, however, oddly consists of rosters with nothing better than unmaxed 2*s. They're also all sitting comfy at 200+ points. Anyone with decently leveled 3*s in the bracket seems to be sitting way below that, with a decent clump hanging around at 120 points and everyone else below that.

MMR is still screwed up terribly.

Bowgentle

Made my way to 490 and now all I get is maxed out villains.
Which wasn't even the case at 1100 before, there were some smaller teams.

It could be that no one is playing this, or it could be a tweak. All I know is that I've exclusively people like Bonfire in my nodes. At 500.

Thor82

Moonstone @187
2* Daken @187
Ares @187
And I only have 164 points. At this rate I'll never reach 300 points.

Unknown

So far this hasn't been too bad. I'm seeing a mix of underleveled and maxed 3* teams which is what I'd expect for my roster (10 maxed 3*s). I'm sitting comfortably at #5 in 5th. 500 in the previous system would have be about 75th at this point. We'll see what happens in the next 36 hrs.

wymtime

Bowgentle wrote:

Made my way to 490 and now all I get is maxed out villains.
Which wasn't even the case at 1100 before, there were some smaller teams.

It could be that no one is playing this, or it could be a tweak. All I know is that I've exclusively people like Bonfire in my nodes. At 500.

I got a very similar result 500 points has given me all maxed rosters. Most of them are worth under 25 points. I do have a 3* roster maxed Sentry, Maxed Daken 142 level Hood (my prefernece to keep him under leveled). Here are my 3 matches I can do.
#1 21 points X-force level 231 Cmags 332, Daken 332
#2 18 points LThor 166, Hood 332, X-force 240
#3 20 points Hood 332, Cmags 332, Sentry 332

so not only do I have maxed rosters but they are all at lower points then me so if I attack them I can get hit really har on retaliations. I am number 4 in my group with #1 Shielded at 942 #2 Shielded at 743 #3 shielded at 675. All 3 maxed rosters. I am all for making progressions difficult but when 600 is a challenge scaling might be a little off. What are 2* teams facing now?

cg2912

SUPERTOM wrote:

So far this hasn't been too bad. I'm seeing a mix of underleveled and maxed 3* teams which is what I'd expect for my roster (10 maxed 3*s). I'm sitting comfortably at #5 in 5th. 500 in the previous system would have be about 75th at this point. We'll see what happens in the next 36 hrs.

But under the previous system would you also be sitting at #75?

Unknown

Working fine for me, 2** transitioning player. I was able to hit 500 quickly with buffed Ares/Daken/Juggs.