Nefarious Foes - Matchmaking Test - Discussion

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  • Alzulra
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    I started playing before the adjustment came with a 2* roster. I've been running Ares/2* Daken, then a 94-before-boost CMags or Sentry as my 3rd. I got smoked in my first fight against another 2* team, and badly wounded in the 2nd so I had to stop playing after 2 rounds.

    I played again last night and this morning after the match level was changed but I'm still not seeing a benefit for me. I'm one of those weird players who actually likes playing match-3 games, so only being able to play 2-3 rounds and having to stop because I'm out of health packs isn't very fun. It's one thing to buy some health packs for one big push at the end, but it's another to have to buy them to make an intial push. Plus, since my main team is utterly destroyed in PVP, that means I can't go and play PVE instead with a slightly hurt team, because if I wipe on that, then I'm done.

    Right now I'm sitting with just over 200 points and #53 in my bracket. I normally end up with around 500 and squeak by in the top 100. The final effect hasn't been that much different for me (that is to say, I'm seeing a few teams that are 2* teams with the occasional high boosted 3*, or low 3* teams) but the inability to get up the first few hundred points without much difficulty is not great. Then with the overall lower points - my bracket leader has a shade over 500 - nobody's reaching the progression rewards. I usually hit 500, and try for 600, before I can't beat anyone anymore.

    So for now, I'm not having as many problems as it sounds like the fully transitioned players are, but I still prefer the old way, if I had to pick one. I appreciate that D3 is at least trying and making adjustments based on our feedback. Hopefully they can hit the sweet spot before season 8 starts.
  • famousfoxking
    famousfoxking Posts: 245 Tile Toppler
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    "David wrote:
    Moore"]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.

    I have a fairly developed roster, so I can't help with the first part. With the second part, it's honestly hard to distinguish which tweaks affected what: as far as I can tell so far, the difficulty of my opponents hasn't increased at all, it's been pretty even since the start. The way this particular PVP is structured though, I can't really make any real determinations.

    1) Sentry/Hood/LDaken punch above their weight class as a team, and of course they're all villains and therefore buffed, so it's really hard to judge how the matchmaking is working out.
    2) I personally only have one maxed villain, so the x2 buff means I'm seeing teams I just balk at. I'm trying to assume the matchmaker is fair, and I'm following my usual strategy: skip anyone worth under 20 points and attack the highest point node. I'm losing a LOT more than I used to, and just getting to 500 has been fairly challenging (600 without shields seems impossible).
    3) That x2 buff is making it more difficult (for me, at least) to adequately judge difference in roster strength. The +90 buff is fairly gentle, but the x2 buff means villains are ramped way up. That just makes it hard to judge how the matchmaking is working. Am I getting creamed because of who is buffed and how much they're buffed? Or am I getting creamed because I'm getting matched against people who are stronger than me? I don't know.

    Basically, the structure of this PVP is sufficiently different from "normal" PVP's that it's very difficult for me to determine what's different because of matchmaking, and what's different because the PVP is radically different from a "featured character +2" event.
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,938 Chairperson of the Boards
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    oh my....i think i killed half of the forum on my climb icon_redface.gif

    usually i don't say "hi" to forum members until i reach around 700-800 points (except Ben Grimm who i occasionally see hovering around the 600 zone but i don't like to say "hi" to him because he can get kind of grumpy and instead of saying "hi" back he goes into a rage shaking his fist in the air and rambling something about clobbering time. *sheesh*)

    This time, however, it was like a who's who of MPQ almost right from the start. It was either forum members or other high scoring scallywags who i have crossed swords with many a' time before. i had to do quite a bit of skipping to find easy targets because lord knows all i need is retaliations from the dead.

    So in other words, me and my short supply of ISO would appreciate it if you didn't keep this change.

    Thank you for at least letting us know about the the change and for actively requesting feedback icon_e_smile.gif

    deadppoolll_zps359e26ce.png
  • sms4002 wrote:
    Spoit wrote:
    I mean, even if he HP boosted from 0 points (normally), there aren't enough people at the 1.2k+ scores for him to have a steady climb. at least not at only 1 shield's worth.

    And even then, if he's using sacrifice, that's still like only 4 fights before sentry needs a health pack, and not too many more for hood, so I'd be surprised if he got more than a dozen fights in before running out of healthpack.png ?

    yeah, i'm gonna call **** on this guy. no possible way to do that. Especially considering that now with this **** change even if he somehow got miracle cascades all the way up to 1100 so he could have the health, every team you face now can beat your team so he would have gotten so many retals on the way up.

    No bro, i made to 1400 with one hop, true story, lmaoooo!
    I don't get the point of claiming that he's able to climb to 1100 with one hop, but ppl like to show-off with things that are not true so i digress. And how do I know that's not true? I stayed un# earlier at 750 for 20 mins and i got hit 5 times, 2 of them are win but still. On top of that, in my alliance there're still 700 pointers looking for q, so yah. I must admit there's also a possiblity that he knows some loopholes in which case he'll be sandboxed soon.

    Back to the topic, actually after i played through this event and give d3 the benefit of doubt, the game doesn't change much except for the climp up to 750. I think after the adjustment it's ok, and it actually gave transitional player a chance to score higher so it's not that bad. But since it's still a straight purnishment for end-game player, I wonder if there's any way to accomodate this?
  • sms4002 wrote:
    91H0M3ml.jpg

    The result of my first match. Having to fight maxed sentry hood daken at 0 points and I almost lose. 3 health packs lost. Working as intended? What a tinykitty load of tinykitty this game is.

    It might seem like a hardship and slap in the face now, but when you get that extra token (*spoiler alert - Moonstone), all that pain and anguish will have been worth it. Right?

    Besides who would want a legitimate shot (old MMR system) for Mystique any way?
  • I joined the event today and honestly it seems very nice to me. I always find matches that are worth 25+. I have climbed to 300 by fighting only 30+ teams and i only had to skip 1-2 times to find them.

    About the toughness and the levels I cannot be sure as they vary. And honestly it is not the best event to check the level of the opponents as everyone is using Ares/Daken/X 80% of the time. Generally, it was more enjoyable. Did I mention that I'm #51 with only 304 points atm?
  • "David wrote:
    Moore"]

    In news going forward, we released another update to the matchmaking today, but it looks like feedback has died down significantly.

    Sorry, but this seems factually incorrect. I was last in here just before this was posted, and have checked back and loads more comments, and the poll now has has way more responses than previous days. So, um, yeah.

    Anyway, levels still all over the shop, so no idea what is going on. I appreciate the communication normally, but the above statement makes me wonder how much attention is actually being paid.
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,757 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2014
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    I am still playing this event and after David[Hi-Fi]Moore's last post I watched my match making a little more this morning. I went to bed above 600 points in 4th place. All I could see was maxed Sentry, Hood, Daken teams. Sometimes With Cmags instead of Daken. This morning I got attacked down to below top 10. I was able to find much easier opponents instead of what I was facing. David said they were looking to make harder opponents as you got to the top of the leaderboard which I think is fair. If you are in the top 5 you should have harder opponents. The problem with this has been the fact that getting harder opponents if you are ranked high can start from point 1. When everyone first started we were all seeing these maxed teams becuase we had not entered so we were all #1 so we had really hard opponents. If the Dev's want this codeing they need to add a delay or a point mark for this to kick in. It is like the previous 166 mark at 600 points, or make it in the last 12 hours having an increase in the difficulty of opponents. As it is right now this MMR favors climbing really late as you can get easier opponents instead of trying to climb high for progressions and placement. By having the top 5 top 10 in each bracket get really hard matches it is forcing these players to shield hop earlier in the 500-600 point range, or massivly boost to win matches. The wall at 800 points was a good mark. It made it so if you wanted to hop to 1300 points you could do so without being HP negative or if you went HP negative it was not by that much. You had to pay for placement but you also got the 1100-1300 progression rewards which is a lot.. Now you are still paying for placement, but it will cost a significant amount more to earn the rewards over 1000 points.
  • mags1587
    mags1587 Posts: 1,020 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Yeah... I don't like this at all. This is really not a good change. I'm not liking how the points are shaping up and I really don't like that, with the teams I'm facing, one bad cascade or starting board means I'm wiped out.

    Though I still can't figure out how much of it is because of the new MMR and how much is because of the event itself (multiple boosted villains are no fun to play against). You really needed to run this MMR test on a normal PvP.
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,757 Chairperson of the Boards
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    sms4002 wrote:
    Spoit wrote:
    I mean, even if he HP boosted from 0 points (normally), there aren't enough people at the 1.2k+ scores for him to have a steady climb. at least not at only 1 shield's worth.

    And even then, if he's using sacrifice, that's still like only 4 fights before sentry needs a health pack, and not too many more for hood, so I'd be surprised if he got more than a dozen fights in before running out of healthpack.png ?

    yeah, i'm gonna call **** on this guy. no possible way to do that. Especially considering that now with this **** change even if he somehow got miracle cascades all the way up to 1100 so he could have the health, every team you face now can beat your team so he would have gotten so many retals on the way up.

    The reality is he has already been sandboxed so he is shielding and shield hopping when he does not have too!!! icon_lol.gificon_lol.gif Keep spending your HP when you don't have too!!
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
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    wymtime wrote:
    When everyone first started we were all seeing these maxed teams becuase we had not entered so we were all #1 so we had really hard opponents.
    But I'm playing NOW, and at 150 points, the easiest battle I saw was Hood, Daken, Patch, and I ended up having to suicide my whole team with a supernova just to avoid losing. Sorry, but if this is the new intended PvP experience for someone with a developed roster, this is exactly how you lose people. Trivial PvE nodes, and a sedate climb to PvP 600 are the only things that keep people from burning out. Stop making every PvE node and every PvP battle such a f'ing ordeal.
  • anamosity
    anamosity Posts: 87
    edited November 2014
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    I don't think there is anything that different than I was seeing last season except that I'm being attacked by less 166 maxed out climbers which seems good to me. I get that the forum folks feel big mean rosters should make the game go easier for you, but generally every game I play as my character levels up I run into higher level opponents. Isn't that what keeps it interesting? In the mean time I'll keep on trucking with my 2* squad.

    Though if getting more points if going to be harder, perhaps a shifting of the progression rewards to match that are in order.
  • IamTheDanger
    IamTheDanger Posts: 1,093 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt.

    I see this set up as working just fine. If everyone sees opponents close to their level, then that takes away the all the big gun players feeding off the newer ones. What I'm reading on here is a lot of people saying that it's harder now. But isn't that the point of playing a game? To be challenged? An NFL team does not win the Super Bowl by playing against a little league team of 12 year olds. Yeah, they still win, but it's really not much of an accomplishment. As to the massive health pack usage, I believe that if this were a "normal" PvP it would not be half as bad. In this event, boosted Sentry, Daken, Ares, Hood, and Rags is just asking for increased damage. Me personally, I've been looking mostly for Sentry, Hood teams. I can handle them. But a maxed out Ares, I try to avoid those. He's just mean icon_evil.gif .

    I'm aware that, yes, there are a few issues with this test. Most prominent IMO, being the Mysty reward, but it was that or make it a season event or push the season back. No matter what D3 did, someone was going to be upset.
  • RWTDBurn
    RWTDBurn Posts: 291
    edited November 2014
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    As a fully transitioned player, I've seen near maxed out teams since reaching 300. I climbed to about 650 last night and like others have said, it's all maxed Sentry, hood, daken teams for as far as the eye can see. With 24+ hours left I never shield at this low level of a score and normally don't need to as I'm usually not even attacked over night. Last night I was hit 8 times in 5 hours with a maxed out Sentry/Hood/laken team on defense. Looking at the point levels of the guys and girls that hit me (all under 700 but above 250), it seems that maxed teams are getting paired up against each other far earlier in the PvP events. If this becomes the norm, fully transitioned players will be required to shield earlier and use more health packs to reach 1000+ mark.

    Now personally, I hate the concept of play to win games and I won't play them regardless of how much I enjoy them. I pay money to support the developers of FTP games that I like, especially when they have cool events like the Anniversary event that are fun for the players. Looking at the economics of MPQ with the previous MMR, I could usually support my health pack, new roster slots, and shield hopping with the HP I earned in placing top 5 or top 10 in PvP and top 20 or better in the PvE main event and subs. It was tough at times, but it's possible to be FTP and win still. Looking at the new MMR so far, I don't think that will be possible anymore. Based on this event (which in all honesty, 1 event with a boosted hood and Sentry isn't enough to truly know what the long term economical results will be) fully transitioned players will need to shield sooner and burn more health packs as our characters take far longer to heal than the 2* and transitional players do.

    I really don't see a need to change the MMR. The old one was fine. Early on the maxed out teams get to enjoy the rewards of what we've worked for for months and months and feast on lower level teams (sounds mean, but we were all there when we started playing as well). Mid way through we have to start to manage what team we will climb with and then who we will put in at defense, then once we hit the 700-800 range we have to start planning the timing of our battles, managing health packs, and shielding before we become too tempting of a target. At 900+ we get the thrill of the shield hopping and the risk/reward of trying to stay to 5 or top 10. The new MMR sucked the fun out of the Nefarious Foes event for me. If the new one is used in the upcoming season, then I'll give it a shot for a few events to see if it in fact does require shielding sooner and buying more health packs. If it does then I think MPQ will have fully transitioned to a pay to win model, and I'll be done. I'm hoping that won't be the case as I truly enjoy this game and the community.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
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    An NFL team does not win the Super Bowl by playing against a little league team of 12 year olds.
    How much would you enjoy football if every week your team had to play against the 1986 Bears?
  • "David wrote:
    Moore"]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.

    This sort of test really should have been done on a "normal" PvP event with "normal" rewards. I can't tell if what I am seeing (and not enjoying) is a problem with the event, MMR or the sheer desire for Mystique covers (I doubt this one though).

    The first day I tried it, and it sucked, as I was only seeing maxed teams from the get go. Now that it is tweeked, I gave it a run with a fully healed roster and 5 health packs. I ended up climbing around 250-260 points (i think I started around 160-170 and ended 418). This in my opinion is a horrible run. The teams I am seeing are either maxed 2*s with some 100 3*s or 120->166 maxed 3*s, but all the fights are what I would call low value (20-25) and against mid-high strength teams (a 187 Ares supported by 200+ level 3*s is not exactly a cake walk). I am used to climbing 1-600 using Patch/Daken/Featured, and minimal Healthpack use, and trying to minimally pick on the 2*s by taking only high value fights. After 600 this sort of slog begins and I switch to the best two to team with the featured character, until I hit 800, where the heavens open up and the high value targets can help me maintain a 800 or so score despite the incoming attacks. I can't even use Patch this event, as he is outclassed to the buffed villains.

    At 418 I have spent a decent amount of iso skipping and these are my 3 "best" options:

    254 Doom, 187 Moonstone, 187 Ares - 23 pts. I could pick on this guy again (I think I just fought him) as this seems to be his A-team, but it gains me little.
    280 Loki, 332 Hood, 166 Patch - 21 pts. I think this is a pseudo tank team, judging by the rest of the roster (maxed 3*s galore)... so no thanks.
    187 Ares, 178 Doom, 222 Hood - 26 Pts. Deja Vu with the first one, I probably will find him again for 23 after this fight, as 26 pts isn't' moving me up the ladder that far.

    In the old system I wouldn't want to hit any of these targets, but I am not going to spend any more ISO, so I guess it is door number 3.

    Is it because the new MMR is keeping me grouped with the same people? Is it becuase having an event where all the villains are at 2x the level? Am I not finding any high value fights because people are shielding more to protect their Mystique reward? I doubt that one, as only the top 5 or so of the people I can see in my bracket are shielded.
  • I see this set up as working just fine. If everyone sees opponents close to their level, then that takes away the all the big gun players feeding off the newer ones. What I'm reading on here is a lot of people saying that it's harder now. But isn't that the point of playing a game? To be challenged?

    In short, no. I do not play this to be challenged. I'm okay with a challenge sometimes, but what I really want is something to relax with after a tough day. I play this because it's a cheap way to satisfy my collector impulses, and because it can be fun to zone out and play a dozen matches or so.

    Challenging matches means characters too injured to continue means I can't play. Challenging being "can I hit x points before I need to break?" can be fun, but individually challenging matches aren't, especially in a PVP like this, where tough matches hurt the very limited pool of people I can use (because I have to factor defensive team in). Constantly challenging matches are as boring - maybe even more boring - than a total lack of challenge, because it just becomes a slog.

    The climb against easier opponents was the closest part of PVP to actually "fun," and this new matchmaking has made it a slog from much, much earlier. I had a lot of easy matches at first, but by the time I hit 300 or so it's been all high-level people and it's dull.

    Between scaling in PVE and this system in PVP they've made matches about 90% challenging now. And that eats my roster. Since I can only really play in the evening, that means I can't play much. They are literally making the game unplayable in a sense. Unless I'm willing to shell out for health packs (spoiler: I'm not), upping the challenge level directly translates into limiting my ability to play.
  • orionpeace
    orionpeace Posts: 343 Mover and Shaker
    edited November 2014
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    Once the Event is concluded, I will put up a new poll so we can record the final response to the new matchmaking.

    If you have any thoughts on the question or what options should be available in the poll, please free to post them here or PM me.

    I want to make sure that our collective experience is recorded as accurately as possible.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
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    An NFL team does not win the Super Bowl by playing against a little league team of 12 year olds. Yeah, they still win, but it's really not much of an accomplishment.

    No, but they at least get to play the Raiders once or twice on the way there.

    And in case, that analogy doesn't really hold. I don't think any of the top forumites care about facing max teams to try to 'win the Super Bowl,' which in this case is the top end of the leaderboard, the shield-hopping phase.

    This is like allowing a D-3 college football team a chance at the D1 title, but they no longer have to worry about a D1 team beating them.
  • RWTDBurn wrote:
    I really don't see a need to change the MMR. The old one was fine. Early on the maxed out teams get to enjoy the rewards of what we've worked for months and months and feast on lower level teams. Midway through we have to start to manage who will climb and then who we will put in at defense, then once we hit the 700-800 range we have to start planning the timing of our battles, managing health packs, and shielding before we become too tempting of a target. At 900+ we get the thrill of the shield hopping and the risk/reward of trying to stay to 5 or top 10. The new MMR sucked the fun out of the Nefarious Foes event for me. If the new one is used in the upcoming season, then I'll give it a shot for a few events to see if it in fact does require shielding sooner and buying more health packs. If it does then I think MPQ will have fully transitioned to a pay to win model, and I'll be done. I'm hoping that won't be the case as I truly enjoy this game and the community.

    I agree.