Nefarious Foes - Matchmaking Test - Discussion

wymtime

Switchman wrote:

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

Thanks for the update. Also what place are you in and what level are the players you are going against. This will be good feed back for the Dev's to see what a 2* is seeing at 500 points compared to a 3*.

Thanks

wymtime

david[hi-fi]Moore
One thing I want to ask is what is the goal for tweeking the MMR? I know the Dev's want to make progression easier for the 2-3* transition and there is a 166 Wall at 600, but what underlying goals are the Dev's going for.
Example:
1) Do the Dev's want to limit the scoring in PVP so only the top 1% can achieve 1300 points?
2) Have more brackets ending with the leaders at 900 points?
3) Have players only playing same level opponents up to a certain point?
4) Do they feel the progressions are being achieved too easily so they want to make it more difficult?

Knowing what the end goal is will help us give feedback. Right now I am posting what sort of level matches I am seeing. It has been far more difficult to climb once I hit 500 points, and I don't know if that is as intended or if the new MMR is still cranked too high. Please let us know what the Dev's are looking to acomplish with the new MMR so we can give better feedback.

Thank you

Phillipes

It is impossible to score more than 200 for me. Im transitioning player scoring 700 - 750 normaly. Full 166 from the beginning. It seems devs want us to buy shields right from the beginning?
How I suppose to end my normal top 50 and my alliance top 100 whan Im not able to get through 200 ??

rixmith

It feels like the system keeps changing... For a while in the NF event I saw nothing but maxed out teams, then things seemed normal for a while, now I'm back to big teams. I'm ranked 30 with 421 points right now, but it sure feels like the old system did when I had around 700 points. I'm just glad I lucked out and had a lot of seed teams in this event, otherwise I don't know that I'd have made it to 300 points. I certainly hope that we go back to the previous algorithm for Season 8!

GuntherBlobel

It seems fine, but I've plateaued at around 500 pts, which is about 200-300 pts lower than usual. I have a lvl 125 3* Roster.

I'm fine with this new system provided that Progression rewards get tweaked accordingly. I barely got that 500 pt 2* cover, which is really not where I am at in the game.

Unknown

This MMR test is awful. This event was an awful event to test it on too. I start out by getting way harder opponents and only 1 i would even think about battling. Also, my hood is powered up to 280, massively raising my MMR. After children of the atom, which I did best ever on, my MMR is raised because of that too. I wish that d3 would bring back the old MMR system.

Unknown

It's a rough one...

I'm hoping it's rolled back. I love the idea of improvement, but let the season go through as it was, and try again after, please!

Thank you for doing this outside of the seasons!

MarvelMan

Just to update, Im approaching 500 but only one of my matches since 250ish has been worth more than 24 points. Im skipping a decent amount as I run into 3x 332s worth 14 points.....


I like the lower scores in that it wont take me hours to play.....but its open to more variation in that a 30 point match between people in the same bracket would cause MASSIVE changes in standings for them.

MarvelMan

It just occurred to me that an additional impact of this, meaning needing fewer games to rank, is that there will be less ISO available. Add in an increased incentive to boost and its going to make it harder to level the 3*, let alone stockpile for 4*s

evanbernstein

I appreciate that the devs are trying to change rankings. As a casual player (who plays every day but does not particularly grind), I have been unable to win a 3* character for some time now. Slots are too expensive to buy and I can't hold on to all the random 1 off cover that I get. The game is very frustrating. I keep considering paying some money, but I keep not doing it because of how temporary it would be -- I wish I could just buy the game (like I bought previous Puzzle Quests) rather than this pay to win game that seems to exist now.

For context, I now (finally) have 3 or 4 maxed 2* characters and a few more almost there. My highest 3* is level 70 Hood that is missing blue.

So, I really appreciate that they are trying to fix the fact that I use to be able to get to 400-500 in pvp and then I just hit a wall of 3* characters that I couldn't pass.

I like that the challenges I'm facing are tailored to my particular capabilities, but I do miss having some matches that were easier.

I do think that the points need to be adjusted based on how hard the match is.

I think they also need to adjust how 'good' the opponent team is. It shouldn't just be based on how maxed out the opponent characters are without the bonuses of the current event: a lot of people I'm playing have more maxed out villains than me, even tho our rosters look fairly similar. I only have Ares and they have Ares, Bullseye, and Daken. Our teams aren't really equal at all in this event.

Devs: thanks for trying to fix things, but please keep working on it.

GrumpySmurf1002

MarvelMan wrote:

Just to update, Im approaching 500 but only one of my matches since 250ish has been worth more than 24 points. Im skipping a decent amount as I run into 3x 332s worth 14 points.....


I like the lower scores in that it wont take me hours to play.....but its open to more variation in that a 30 point match between people in the same bracket would cause MASSIVE changes in standings for them.

Same here. Nothing but 17-20 pt matches still, i'm at around 350 now. Even my retaliations, where i'm losing 8 pts (meaning in the old days I should be getting 35+ on a hit back) are worth 20ish.

Humans typically resist change, but these changes are not good for healthy pvp.

thedude

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

MarvelMan wrote:

Just to update, Im approaching 500 but only one of my matches since 250ish has been worth more than 24 points. Im skipping a decent amount as I run into 3x 332s worth 14 points.....


I like the lower scores in that it wont take me hours to play.....but its open to more variation in that a 30 point match between people in the same bracket would cause MASSIVE changes in standings for them.

Same here. Nothing but 17-20 pt matches still, i'm at around 350 now. Even my retaliations, where i'm losing 8 pts (meaning in the old days I should be getting 35+ on a hit back) are worth 20ish.

Humans typically resist change, but these changes are not good for healthy pvp.

Yep,same for me

Unknown

After giving the new system a try,I hate to say that I HATE IT! When i started i saw a mix of low and high scores that I could fight, forcing me to snipe innocent ppl at 300-500 points. That means that if I should get to 500 points the system forces me to shield or loose a ton of points to snipers.

How is that progress? Its the opposite! With the new MMR the game is more p2w than ever. it punishes everyone. There can't be no late climbing, sentry&hood and a lot of HP spending is the only way to score high.

NO! THAT'S WRONG! REVERSE THE MADNESS!

Unknown

Nefarious Foes is a difficult PVP from which to provide any meaningful nuanced feedback on matchmaking because of a lack of any reliable standard or frame of reference to compare against:

a. The last Nefarious Foes appears to have been over two months ago (Season 4 -Aug 20ish), in other words, ancient history. I can't recall anything about that event.

b. Even if I did, my roster was miles away back then (2* + one 3*) from where it is now (many 3*).

c. I scored 650, placed 16th in that previous NF event, but even that isn't worth anything to compare against -- that score was back when C Mags was god tier and overwhelmingly contributed to my score. I presume C Mags was buffed in the previous event.

b. It's difficult to get a sense of node difficulty versus the past when most of the nodes in this PVP are higher level and power than the most difficult nodes in the final Gauntlet -- level 187 Ares, and a combination of 332 Xforce/Hood/Mags/Sentry. Moreover, this event skews the character selection toward villains, so many of the patterns we are accustomed to seeing in PVPs that we have some sense of measuring ourselves against are gone.

I'd be able to give much more relevant feedback if this new system were tested on a "regular" PVP event, a featured character + your choice of two characters from your roster. It might be worth trying one more such PVP event with this new system to get better feedback.

All I can say at this point is that I'm progressing up the point scale about the same as I was in PVPs last week, but I haven't observed higher level play and matchmaking yet.

IamTheDanger

To me, it seems more, ..... leveled out. As if I'm seeing players that are around my level. As far as game play, it might make things more fair and evened out. But come on, seriously? Who wants to play fair?

Honestly though, I kind of see it as an improvement.

quick edit/addition, ... I really do think it would have been better to do this on an event that had no boosted characters. Like the Shield Simulator maybe? Unless the change has something to do specifically with boosted characters.

Unknown

I played till 100 points today. I think 3 matches were buffed seed teams as I couldn't see their rosters. After that I played 1 or more to achieve 100. I'm playing with maxed Daken (188), Ares (188) and a 53 (around 100 iirc) Loki. So far there wasn't anything unusual. I'm having difficulty judging the difficulty of the matches I see in my nodes though due to buffs to several characters and the fact that there isn't a loaner in this event. I like this event btw. It's even better than BoP imo.

edit: I think buffed chars' levels are doubled.

pmorcs

I'm not very high yet, and I just started (after the tweak) but I can already say that, for me, personally, this has so far been a MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT.

I'm used to seeing an extremely cyclical, limited selection of the same 6 or 8 players right off the bat, who are all pretty tough (but mostly possible) to beat. In PVP after PVP lately I have seen this for the first 450-550 points, consistently. It was really discouraging - even if I could laboriously beat those same people over and over, it's kind of a **** thing to do.. so I spend most of my time paying to skip just to find one new person to fight. Tedious.

Then, magically, somewhere in the realm of 500 points, I would start to get an influx of different players - some maxed, some 2*s, some in between. Like a breath of fresh air. Then it would get harder and harder the higher I climbed, as you might expect. Until I get into the more-attacks-than-wins zone and call it a day.

Anyway, in this one, I've seen a great diversity of teams from the very start. Some harder, some softer, but none impossible and no repeats yet.

I'll come back and re-edit later with further impressions but for the first bit so far I'm already a fan of this change.

Here is the tip of my current roster: http://scromp.net/~bnaylor/roster/

wymtime

thedude wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

MarvelMan wrote:

Just to update, Im approaching 500 but only one of my matches since 250ish has been worth more than 24 points. Im skipping a decent amount as I run into 3x 332s worth 14 points.....


I like the lower scores in that it wont take me hours to play.....but its open to more variation in that a 30 point match between people in the same bracket would cause MASSIVE changes in standings for them.

Same here. Nothing but 17-20 pt matches still, i'm at around 350 now. Even my retaliations, where i'm losing 8 pts (meaning in the old days I should be getting 35+ on a hit back) are worth 20ish.

Humans typically resist change, but these changes are not good for healthy pvp.

Yep,same for me

So I just hit 600 points and am seriously doing the MPQ happy dance. All I can use is Sentry, Hood, Daken as that is what I am seeing. I have been hit twice for 35 points each when I was over 500. All the matches are for 20-27 points. I will also say I looked at the leaderboard and saw my #1 an X-men at 1400 points. This tells me if the new MMR is to keep scores down it is not going to work. It might cost some more HP to hop as you might need to start earlier, but I think the X-men are probably still using X-force and boosting green and black. He is still devastating and does not take the health pack punch Sentry does. I started yesterday and in children of Atom would easily be over 800 by now. I cannot say this MMR is making for fun game play.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi everyone,

Here's additional info on the current Versus test from the team at Demiurge:

*UPDATE (11/13/14)

"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."

mags1587

First off, thanks for the apology and acknowledgment of the issues with the reward being Mystique and the problems players were facing at the beginning. It is really nice to get a response and have that information.

I just started the event tonight, just got up to 200 points, and I'm having a rough time of it. I just can't quite figure out how much of it is due to the MMR change and how much of it is due to the event itself and having multiple boosted characters. This really wasn't the best choice of an event to solicit feedback on.

So far I do seem to be facing almost exclusively maxed teams, which matches up with my roster. Not sure if it will continue this way throughout the event, but I'll have to see what happens after my health packs regenerate.