Nefarious Foes - Matchmaking Test - Discussion

SnowcaTT

We were talking in-alliance about how we felt a little bad for all the 1* and 2* teams that had tons of points, weren't visible to our teams earlier (almost like they were playing a completely different PVP...), and suddenly are the easy path forward from 400-600. I hit the 166 wall at 650, after many of these fights.

There was also talk about how this PVP must seem to people who don't visit the forums. It sounds like the rules changed four times (start, scale back, further tweak, then original rules) while the event went on.

Unknown

Why....would...you...change...it...back...now....?

I could really care less about which mmr system is used quite honestly. Its a bit annoying that you changed it back to the old system of "wait til the last few hours and hop your way past everyone to the top," after players had to deal with the 20-30 point range for nearly 2 days.. but whatever.

I found the new system more challenging but who wants that.

Unknown

I am sure a lot of this has already been said, but here are my thoughts.

1. Appreciate the trial between seasons, but 95% of PvP events are Featured + 2. It would have made much more sense to use that format and made it easier to gauge changes.

2. Definitely creating score suppression. Usually at this point top10 is 750 to 1000 points. Today it is at 648.

3. Almost every opponent that I have seen has a combination of 187 Ares, a 250-332 Daken, Hood, Sentry, Cmags. My characters top out at 123 and I usually see a fair amount of Featured-94-94 (or worse) teams in my climb to 400 (currently at 407), so much more challenging opponents for the climb.

4. Still had plenty of 30+ point matches before I got to 300. Once I passed 300, most matches have been in the 23-27 point range. I don't mind fighting better teams than I have, as long as they are worth good points but this does not address that issue.

5. Why do we need MMR? Open opponents to all within 150% to 75% of current score. For example, this would mean that at 407, I could see anyone between 611 and 305 points, regardless of team composition. This would open up solid point totals to climb up on and limit 40+ point losses for lower level players.

MojoWild

From David's announcement post:
"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."

So why was it done early?

Unknown

MojoWild wrote:

From David's announcement post:
"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."

So why was it done early?

My guess is the system couldn't support 1 MMR scheme for Nefarious Foes and a different MMR scheme for Mystique. Probably the 12 hour overlap was not considered when implementing the test. Rather that mess with the first 12 hours of the season, they chose to end the test early. Just my guess, no official word that I have heard.

wymtime

I have tried to give a lot of feedback on this event both on what I am seeing and when I am seeing it. This is the last bit of feedback I will give and is has to do with the fact that the changed MMR back to normal for the last 8 hours.

Look it was not the right MMR we know this, you know this, but it was a test, and by running it as a test for the whole event everyone is on the same playing field. Some people spent a good amount of HP on shields becuase they wanted to climb high. Now people can come in at the last min score much higher and gain the progression rewards and placement they would not have gotten before and the people who have been shielding and grinding will be punnished for it. again

If you changed it back because of season 8 and you felt it was effecting season 8 we still have 2 days of the first event to have the right MMR. If you are changing it back so we can gain progression rewards and placement here is my alternate option. Run the event again to gove out Mystique covers. You can run it at the end of the season so you don't have to run Mystiques PVP where she is the 1100 progression again, but you can basicly give the community a do over. This is a much better solution than just moving the MMR back to what it was at the end of the PVP.
D3 I appriciate the fact that you have tried to fix the MMR, you solicited our feedback, and when it did not work the way you wanted you went back to did not punish the players by sticking with the new system. It shows you are really listening so thank you. Next season break I hope we can test a new MMR and give more feedback. Please make sure you run it for the whole PVP so it is an even playing field.

Thank you

Unknown

Final thoughts/feedback on the MMR test:

I'm a day 134 player who just maxed my second 3* and has several others in the 140 range.

I found the first day, 200-300 point climb fairly reasonable. On day 2, from 300 to 400 points my climb became much slower, each fight eating up multiple health packs which forced play sessions to be spaced out more. Around 450 there was a wall of sorts, apparently those players near my ranking were experiencing the same thing, as most of the players in my bracket were hovering around this fairly tight point range. One or two fights/losses could move you or up or down one or two dozen places in the rankings. The top couple scorers were over 1k scores, but by 5th place, the scores were around 500-600 and around 450 for top 25.

Those players that crossed above 500 unshielded, even with maxed villain rosters, experienced heavier gravity and kept getting knocked back to the rather tight range of 450-490. From a screenshot I saved at that time, I see a point spread in my bracket from 16th place at a score of 488, to 25th place at a score of 452. Looking at all the players around my ranking in my bracket and their rosters, I found one player from the "beaver eaters" alliance (o.O)? who's max character is a level 106 devil dino, a level 84 Ares, and not much else in the way of villains. How this roster was able to get ahead of mine and another alliance mate who happened to be in my bracket, remaining unshielded, is beyond me. There was one other low level player near me in the ranking while the rest were max rosters.

It left the impression that the food chain rather forked into two different food chains, despite competing for the same prizes.

Overnight (4 hours), I was attacked multiple times, about 7 times, (My def team was max sentry, max ares, lvl 280 c mags), much more than typical for a PVP losing about 70-100 points. After a short-lived morning set of battles, I managed to hop just above 500 and squat, shielded. This was the point where the MMR system was reverted.

After the reversion and short respite my climb was much easier until about 700, where I encountered the typical wall of max rosters, threw up a shield and called it a ball. I much prefer the previous system, warts and all. Overall, this new MMR system appeared to divide down all scores (aside from shield hopping whales), achieving a higher gravity at 450, than at the typical 600-750. Secondly, the range of scores as a result of the gravity was compressed more than under the previous system. Typically, top 25 in a PVP is somewhere between a score of 725 and 800 depending on participation, awards, etc. A wider spread in the point distribution is preferred, in my opinion, because it leaves less to chance and affords the player a sense of a measure of control over their placement. Moving up and down dozens of ranks with one or two fights feels too chaotic and out of control for a rewards structure with tiers of top5, top10, top25, etc. It feels like gambling in Vegas (i.e. "round and round she's goes, where you'll end up nobody knows")

I'm not sure precisely where this one would have ended up, but I suspect that top 25 would have ended up around 500, top10 at 600 -- with 10 hours left, I was around top 20 with 500 and change.

The irony is even after the reversion to the previous (current) system, which is strongly preferred over this trial system, my current and likely final score at around 709 (I'm shielded at the moment) is no better (and actually a little lower) than it was under the system that was in place for the last Nefarious Foes back in August in Season 4 -- and at that time I had only one transitional 3* character, max OBW and Ares -- the difference in my roster between then and today is tremendous, literally, it's like 300+ 3* covers and 1000 character levels higher.

"What a long strange trip it's been"...

Spoit

wymtime wrote:

I have tried to give a lot of feedback on this event both on what I am seeing and when I am seeing it. This is the last bit of feedback I will give and is has to do with the fact that the changed MMR back to normal for the last 8 hours.

Look it was not the right MMR we know this, you know this, but it was a test, and by running it as a test for the whole event everyone is on the same playing field. Some people spent a good amount of HP on shields becuase they wanted to climb high. Now people can come in at the last min score much higher and gain the progression rewards and placement they would not have gotten before and the people who have been shielding and grinding will be punnished for it. again

If you changed it back because of season 8 and you felt it was effecting season 8 we still have 2 days of the first event to have the right MMR. If you are changing it back so we can gain progression rewards and placement here is my alternate option. Run the event again to gove out Mystique covers. You can run it at the end of the season so you don't have to run Mystiques PVP where she is the 1100 progression again, but you can basicly give the community a do over. This is a much better solution than just moving the MMR back to what it was at the end of the PVP.
D3 I appriciate the fact that you have tried to fix the MMR, you solicited our feedback, and when it did not work the way you wanted you went back to did not punish the players by sticking with the new system. It shows you are really listening so thank you. Next season break I hope we can test a new MMR and give more feedback. Please make sure you run it for the whole PVP so it is an even playing field.

Thank you

Except pretty please not NF again. In fact, can we just file NF away under the same category as unstable ISO and single map heroics? at least until sentry is nerfed

Unknown

They need to really look at shields and/or Sentry (those two are pretty much the same issue) if they're going forward with this because while everyone's score is crunched together, the points you get from shield hopping (which might as well say Sentry bombing) is relatively unchanged. If this is going to be the norm going forward you'd have to make points gained whlie shielded reduced or even 0 because otherwise a successful strategy could simply be hit 800 or so and then stay shielded for the rest of the event, especially if there's no Sentry to worry about. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that strategy, I really can't imagine D3 want to encourage this kind of behavior. Of course the progression reward needs to be looked at, but I'm sure we're in a very favorable stretch of achieveable progression rewards compared to the historical average (there was a time nobody got anywhere close to 1300) so I don't know if it's realistic to expect changes. It probably should take close to 2500 HP to hit 1300 if there's supposed to be a balance but if it cost so much to hit 1300, then it becomes too risky to ever do so in the first place, which was what usually happened in the pre Sentry days. Perhaps they need to change the 1100/1300 to a random 3*/4* token instead and make it easier to get. Looking at history it was either too hard (if not impossible) or too easy and I'm not convinced there's ever going to be a solution that's just right.

DrStrange-616

Thank God they're getting rid of this. My 166 wall is now a 300+ wall. That's a big wall. I keep expecting Jon Snow to walk by.

Unknown

From glancing through the thread I know I'm in the minority but I preferred the test mmr. I've got 6 maxed 3 stars and am working to get my 4 stars viable. Instead of fighting through the usual underdeveloped 2 & 3 stars teams for 15-20 points at a time I was getting teams much closer to my maxed Hood/LDaken/Ares for 30-38 points a time. So I was still wining and had the added luxury of climbing points much faster. This is a big improvement. Then you reverse the change and I'm back to the 14-17 point grind against the poor teams. I haven't tanked in a while as I prefer playing the stronger teams, I was finally getting this from the start with a great point award. Please try this again, I tend not to post much as this forum is the very definition of The Angry Mob, and from what I can see the Developer's indulge/give in to this minority too often.

Unknown

Please set an upper limit to how much skip tax must be paid per match. Or remove skip tax altogether. Please.

DrStrange-616

gobstopper wrote:

Please set an upper limit to how much skip tax must be paid per match. Or remove skip tax altogether. Please.

This. I'm forced to spend iso after every match now just to find a team I have a remote chance of competing against.

Unknown

Veteran player with a healthy stable of maxxed 3/4 star characters

For the entire tournament I've been seeing 80% sub-20pt teams which is even worse than usual, and tons of 2* teams which prrrobably isn't good

Hard to tell though because "Go SentryDaken or go Ares" isn't the best tournament to get a feel for how MMR is working

Unknown

DrStrange-616 wrote:

Thank God they're getting rid of this. My 166 wall is now a 300+ wall. That's a big wall. I keep expecting Jon Snow to walk by.

Those previous 166s are now 332s because they have a 100% buff in Nefarious Foes, but so are your 166s.

DrStrange-616

Phantron wrote:

DrStrange-616 wrote:

Thank God they're getting rid of this. My 166 wall is now a 300+ wall. That's a big wall. I keep expecting Jon Snow to walk by.

Those previous 166s are now 332s because they have a 100% buff in Nefarious Foes, but so are your 166s.

I don't have any 166s. I have 2 buffed characters at 187. The rest are sub 100. The "wall"/foes that are queued up for me are 300+.

Unknown

Something odd (and really annoying) just happened to me. I shield-hopped to about 1250, using 40+ targets... and all of a sudden my targets barely yield points anymore, I find myself skipping through and endless field of people worth 6 points or less. Seriously?

Also, I practically didn't get hit until 1000, and then all of a sudden everybody and his goldfish starts jumping me. What the kitten?!

Pylgrim

EpicBeastmode wrote:

Why....would...you...change...it...back...now....?

I could really care less about which mmr system is used quite honestly. Its a bit annoying that you changed it back to the old system of "wait til the last few hours and hop your way past everyone to the top," after players had to deal with the 20-30 point range for nearly 2 days.. but whatever.

I found the new system more challenging but who wants that.

THIS THIS THIS THIS

An update on my experience throughout the event, which had been positive until now:

As I said previously, I was finding the event challenging and slow-progressing BUT fair. Only players with "easy" teams for me to beat handed out less than 20 points. Teams that would reward 30-40 were at my best team's level and above. Progressing was a strategic combination of hitting the "difficult" teams when my guys were fully healed to get more points, then attack the weak teams for few points until my guys definitely needed healing, rinse and repeat. This was fair on the people with strong teams as they don't get attacked that much, AND fair on the weak teams as when they get attacked they are only losing a handful of points. Indeed, I myself didn't get attacked much by teams that would steal more than 10 points from me (as I would be too "hard" for them) so most of my attacks came from people with much stronger teams than mine but many more points than me, so I lost very few.

All in all, it worked as a slow, but methodical and sure progression. I got 800 points playing regularly through the event and I I remained top 5 the whole time.

Then, I woke up to find that they had "fixed" the MMR back to the old ways. Sure enough, the status quo was restored and where the top 5 had been comprised of players with all kinds of rosters (though, admittedly more on the top side) with 800-950 points, now the top 5 looks like every other top 5 in the recent history of the game: Whales with fully maxed rosters and over 1200 points. Unshielding in a vain attempt to climb got me attacked for 70 points in the time I got 22. In other words, BACK TO THE WORLD WHERE AGGRESSIVE SHIELD-HOPPING AND SENTRY BOMBING ARE THE ONLY WAYS TO BE COMPETITIVE. Back to the world where whales can ignore an event for its duration, have a quick an easy climb to 900 points in the last few hours on the backs of much weaker teams from whom they steal 40 points a pop, then drop $20 to shield hop and Sentry bomb their way into the 1300s+. Joy!!

Cannot help to think that the very vocal group of players that raged against these changes were precisely those who found their winning "strategy" no longer as effective as before.

Dragon_Nexus

Huh, guess that's why suddenly the top ten have over 1000 points in my bracket again.

The way it was going I would make slow but steady progress on enemies that seemed to loiter around my level and would offer enough of a challenge. It felt a bit grindy, but I'd look at the top scorer and it never really climbed higher than the 650 mark for ages.

Then today I've had loads of level 300s (Sentry, Hood and Magneto/Daken, obvs) and maybe the occasional Ares/Storm/NMags group that gives me 15-20 points, so now the top guy has over 1300 points and I ground to a halt just short of 700, definitely not enough to maintain a top 25 position in a highly contested PvP with covers people really want to obtain.

You really couldn't have just waited for this PvP to finish and *then* revert back to the old system?

Unknown

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Huh, guess that's why suddenly the top ten have over 1000 points in my bracket again.

The way it was going I would make slow but steady progress on enemies that seemed to loiter around my level and would offer enough of a challenge. It felt a bit grindy, but I'd look at the top scorer and it never really climbed higher than the 650 mark for ages.

Then today I've had loads of level 300s (Sentry, Hood and Magneto/Daken, obvs) and maybe the occasional Ares/Storm/NMags group that gives me 15-20 points, so now the top guy has over 1300 points and I ground to a halt just short of 700, definitely not enough to maintain a top 25 position in a highly contested PvP with covers people really want to obtain.

You really couldn't have just waited for this PvP to finish and *then* revert back to the old system?

They promised in writing they would wait till end of this event. I'm sure they'll give some excuse instead of doing the right thing. I can't wait how me getting tiny kitties over was what I really wanted.