A couple upcoming changes to PvP events

Spoit

ApolloAndy wrote:

It sounds like the moral of the story is, "if you want progression rewards play early, if you want ranking rewards play late, if you want both, play early be prepared to spend a lot on shields."

Nah, you just need to avoid the first few brackets, and then shielding at the progression reward should be enough to get the top placement too

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

One thing we've been concerned about is encouraging you to skip a zillion opponents before fighting one. We think most people have more fun fighting than skipping. We've added a feature to a future release that adds a small Iso-8 cost to skipping. Our hope is that it will add a little more strategy to deciding whether or not to skip a fight, and a side effect is that it should improve matchmaking (Rating players accurately is more difficult the greater control you have over exactly who to fight. We want you to have some of that control because it's an interesting choice, but infinite skips may be too much). This feature won't be in these next events - it'll be in an app update.

Ok, so I'd like to offer some constructive feedback with this. The big problem with this is MMR and how you either calculate it or it gets assigned to you. Putting it mildly, your MMR system stinks. I don't have a single character past level 100. Not one. The only way I've gotten to where I am is by scratching and clawing my way with the help of boosts and selective use of the skip feature. Now you don't want me to sue skip so much, but now I'm pigeon holed in that the people I am matched up with are all max level max cover players. Yes, maybe 1 out of 20 people I get matched up with are even level to me or below me. Now I have to pay to find equal level opponents? If you want us to keep pumping money into your game that's fine, but I'm not going to do it just to find an opponent I can beat. I'm already way low on ISO because I have to spend it all on boosts. I have max covers on almost all of my characters, but I don't have the iso to level them. now you want more iso just to find an opponent? The cost to skip should not be ISO then, it should be game points for what every tournament you are in. Every time you skip should just count as a defeat and a yield.

If you want us to buy ISO, that's one thing, but I've already spent more money on this game then I spent on any single AAA game title in the past two years. I've spent more than $60 USD and now you want me to spend money just to find opponents that I can beat? That skip button is going to have to be relabeled the I Quit button because I'm not going to do spend money to find an opponent.

That is all.

Unknown

Well, the biggest problem is you're matched with opponents based on their current points and your current points in the current tourney with no regard to their team. Afaict, an all lvl 100 team at 0 points looks the same as an all lvl 1 team at 0 points as far as matchmaking is concerned.

ChrisV82

Before, when taking event rating into account while matchmaking, we looked for opponents within a certain range above and below your event rating. Now, we still limit the amount below your rating that we look (so you don't get worthless matches), but you can now be matched with players that have event ratings any distance above yours. We rolled this out during the first run of the Ares tournament and it looks like it's having a positive effect so far.
***
One thing we've been concerned about is encouraging you to skip a zillion opponents before fighting one. We think most people have more fun fighting than skipping. We've added a feature to a future release that adds a small Iso-8 cost to skipping. Our hope is that it will add a little more strategy to deciding whether or not to skip a fight, and a side effect is that it should improve matchmaking (Rating players accurately is more difficult the greater control you have over exactly who to fight. We want you to have some of that control because it's an interesting choice, but infinite skips may be too much). This feature won't be in these next events - it'll be in an app update.

That stinks. It looks like we're going to be offered matches against much stronger teams which will badly damage characters, thus necessitating the need to wait for characters to heal (or health boxes to regenerate), or, of course, buying more health. I'm happy throwing dollars into this game, but I'm not going to do it just for the chance to play.

I don't want to beat up on much weaker teams, but I don't want to get beaten up by much stronger teams, either. When all my characters are leveled 35-50 and the teams I keep generating are 75-120, I need to skip those matches, and if I get penalized for doing that, then I'm just not going to play.

Unknown

ChrisV82 wrote:

That stinks. It looks like we're going to be offered matches against much stronger teams which will badly damage characters, thus necessitating the need to wait for characters to heal (or health boxes to regenerate), or, of course, buying more health. I'm happy throwing dollars into this game, but I'm not going to do it just for the chance to play.

I don't want to beat up on much weaker teams, but I don't want to get beaten up by much stronger teams, either. When all my characters are leveled 35-50 and the teams I keep generating are 75-120, I need to skip those matches, and if I get penalized for doing that, then I'm just not going to play.

I don't mean to endlessly flog a dead horse, but this all comes back to having a point system which has no basis in the actual strength of your opponent. Offering that opponent worth all those points is supposed to aid you, but an opponent with that many points is likely to have a relatively strong team for a given matchmaking group.

Unknown

Misguided wrote:

I don't mean to endlessly flog a dead horse

I'm sure Dead Horse doesn't mind. They're just happy for the attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByYrFPh4iWc

Unknown

Im not sure if the "making it more dangerous to be at the top" is working.

In my Divine tourney bracket the winner had over 2200, the next closest person was in the 900s. Just to give you an idea of the rest of the bracket, I finished top 45 with about 430ish. I kept getting the same guys over and over again. Retaliation cycle kept most people grouped together...except those 2 up top. Maybe that's what it was supposed to do though

Unknown

ibontherun wrote:

Im not sure if the "making it more dangerous to be at the top" is working.

In my Divine tourney bracket the winner had over 2200, the next closest person was in the 900s. Just to give you an idea of the rest of the bracket, I finished top 45 with about 430ish. I kept getting the same guys over and over again. Retaliation cycle kept most people grouped together...except those 2 up top. Maybe that's what it was supposed to do though

It's not. Based on what several people have posted, it's pretty safe once you get up there, certainly much safer than the guys below.

Unknown

I would love to see some of those fabled high value opponents that are now supposedly available for me to fight. My experience in the God tournament these past few days was that I had the same 10 guys ad infinitum with no real gain for any of us. Same old MMR bullmess, except that the attainable progression rewards are total ****.

So that brings me to point one: the attainable progression rewards are total ****. I don't see any reason that the first 3* covers on the progression list should be out of reach of most players. PVP is the only part of this game that is guaranteed to always be available, and thus the only part of the game that you can always play after the prologue. Why on Earth should it not be seen as a source of playable covers through progression rewards? I don't necessarily mind if the 4* covers stay at some ungodly point on the rewards table--they should be rare...but the 3* covers? Why can't people who enjoy playing the game earn them by playing the game? If there isn't going to be a permanent PVE part of the game, then there should at least be a reasonable reward on investment from PVP. And 600 or 700 points for a lousy 2* cover is not reasonable. It would be insulting--if most people could count on breaking away from the pack of 500 point players and doing well enough to actually be insulted by receiving one.

Which is point two. MMR. MMR. MMR. I saw about a dozen opponents over the course of the last tournament. My stable is higher-end (by which I mean I will fight literally anyone with only mild fear that I'll even have to go to a second round), but I never had the option of taking on higher-score players. If they deepened the pool of possible targets, the system definitely left a lot of us flailing about in the shallows.

So here's my suggestion: put the progression rewards back. Leave the 4* cover at the end of the rainbow or whatever, but put the 3* covers back where they were in the 2 days after shields were released when people could actually earn them. Give people 325 point 2* covers and low-value hero point infusions. People should be able to earn prizes by playing the game. That's why they do it. Take away our sense of progress and the game is meaningless--why not just play actual Bejeweled instead?

Kill the zero-sum mentality of the tournaments. There are few gaming experiences so unpleasant as being stuck in a hopeless MMR quagmire where your opponent selection is limited and all of your wins are met by instant retaliations with no forward progress. If you want to leave the progression rewards set to "ridiculous," then at least guarantee players some forward progress. If there is truly a threshold below which you don't lose as many points as your opponent gains (and there definitely is one, I just don't know where it is), increase that threshold every time I win a match. Give me a tangible bonus for consistently winning matches from the beginning of the tournament to the end, instead of all this two steps forward and two steps back business. If your zero sum score threshold was pushed away from you as you won games, there would be a definite incentive to play early and often (other than love of the game, of course--that's one commodity that's already being borrowed against pretty heavily).

After that, take the MMR system as it currently stands and set it on fire. Use the ashes to choke the parents of anyone who defends it, then seal their corpses in a vault at the bottom of the sea. I would rather just see lists of people randomly chosen from everyone currently playing the game than see the lists of potential opponents I get now. At least with random everyone I know that there's a chance I'll get someone worth some points.

And, forum community, please save me the cynical, over-played response of "the devs won't make such changes because they want more money." I'm assuming by speaking in this forum that the developers are actually interested in player satisfaction and not solely in trying to squeeze the community for every loose cent it has.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

I would love to see some of those fabled high value opponents that are now supposedly available for me to fight. My experience in the God tournament these past few days was that I had the same 10 guys ad infinitum with no real gain for any of us. Same old MMR bullmess, except that the attainable progression rewards are total ****.

Those guys definitely existed for a short time, but I believe it was quickly tweaked again. I certainly never anyone higher than 1200+ in the entire tournament even though I know they must be out there.

Progression rewards are too easy in the cheap shield era but most likely too hard now, unless you're lucky enough to find the fabled bagman team opponent. The progression rewards should be made easier but weaker as well. The most logical thing would be some fraction of a cover. If this is somehow impossible, make some special tokens that have say 2/3 chance of being 1000 isotope 8 and 1/3 chance of being whatever cover was supposed to be in that position. They can further tweak the percentages as they see fit.

Unknown

There are islands of MMR. I think about 1400 is one of them. You need to slog from 1200 to 1400 and then you tend to find the high level guys again. By the time I crossed that threshold, most of my battles were for 30+ points and against people that had 1800-2400 points, for the rest of the DC tournament.

Unknown

At the end of Round 1 of the Gods tourney, I saw a couple people in the 1400-1800 range, while I was at 600-700. So, it's still out there.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

There are islands of MMR. I think about 1400 is one of them. You need to slog from 1200 to 1400 and then you tend to find the high level guys again. By the time I crossed that threshold, most of my battles were for 30+ points and against people that had 1800-2400 points, for the rest of the DC tournament.

The whole structure of the PvP reminds me a lot like the Tour de France. If you didn't totally break away, the peloton quickly drags you back to the pack and you're condemned to live a life of mediocrity. I don't think the high points stuff has anything to do with MMR. Those guys you saw with 1800-2400 might be the only guys in the entire tournament with that kind of points, and since the priority of the matchup is still to find someone remotely close to you in points, once you get high enough there's no choice on who your oppoents are (in this case, very favorable ones). Once you're at say 1400, those 10 guys with score of 1800-2400 are the only guys who are 'close' to your points since almost everyone else is stuck somewhere aroudn 500-700, and comparatively, 1800 is closer to 1400 than 700.

Unknown

Eh. MMR bubbles still seem to exist, where at the high end, you'll only see a small set of players. I know the last tourney I was up high in (very end of the first Rage & Ruin), I couldn't see any of the top people in my bracket, and there were a few people who dropped out of my MMR despite clearly having enough points to be viable to me (I recall breaking my shield to wail on Polkio's bagteam, and only getting a swing once before he disappeared. So sad ;_:). So, breaking away appears to be both a matter of your point total and your MMR. You can clear 2000, but if your MMR is composed to people still grasping their way up, you'll always have the chance to be dragged back down.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

There are islands of MMR. I think about 1400 is one of them. You need to slog from 1200 to 1400 and then you tend to find the high level guys again. By the time I crossed that threshold, most of my battles were for 30+ points and against people that had 1800-2400 points, for the rest of the DC tournament.

I've found that's the hardest hill to climb in progression... 1000 - 1400. If you find youself in a frenzied bracket where attacks are coming in waves and retaliations are swift, the only way you're going to break out of this tier is to boost up and crank out wins faster than they can hit you. Or shield up and attack late at night or early in the morning when there are less people online.

Once you've cleared the pack it's nothing but high value targets and shielded 2400's with tank teams that will launch you to the top in no time at all.

I would also delay tournament entry for at least a day, so people have a chance to get their scores up, and you have plenty of juicy targets. If you play off the jump and end up leading the pack, you become the high value target everybody else is banging with nobody to target yourself.

Unknown

I would also delay tournament entry for at least a day, so people have a chance to get their scores up, and you have plenty of juicy targets. If you play off the jump and end up leading the pack, you become the high value target everybody else is banging with nobody to target yourself.

this is exactly what happened to me during round one of DC. I saw the same five opponents for the whole second day of the tourney and had to spend a fortune in shields to have a chance at 2400 because every time I popped it to try to get over the hump I was pummeled with 50 point hits over and over. It doesn't pay to get yourself way in front until the very end it seems.

Spoit

AsianInvasion wrote:

jozier wrote:

There are islands of MMR. I think about 1400 is one of them. You need to slog from 1200 to 1400 and then you tend to find the high level guys again. By the time I crossed that threshold, most of my battles were for 30+ points and against people that had 1800-2400 points, for the rest of the DC tournament.

I've found that's the hardest hill to climb in progression... 1000 - 1400. If you find youself in a frenzied bracket where attacks are coming in waves and retaliations are swift, the only way you're going to break out of this tier is to boost up and crank out wins faster than they can hit you. Or shield up and attack late at night or early in the morning when there are less people online.

Once you've cleared the pack it's nothing but high value targets and shielded 2400's with tank teams that will launch you to the top in no time at all.

I would also delay tournament entry for at least a day, so people have a chance to get their scores up, and you have plenty of juicy targets. If you play off the jump and end up leading the pack, you become the high value target everybody else is banging with nobody to target yourself.

Honestly, if you're going for 2.4k, odds are you're getting 1st place too

Unknown

I for one definitely think the MMR system needs to be re-implemented as a cover-level system where the covers you use directly affect your competition. You can still get to the coveted 2400 mark if you change up your team, but you wouldn't be seeing the same teams skip after skip. No more MMR hell as everyone puts it, because if you bring in different leveled covers, the competition changes. People can still gain with one team and if they feel they're being retaliated against or attacked too much, change their line-up to put them in a different cover-level bracket.

Unknown

On the next event you guys should add 2 characters at one time! That would be so cool. Like for Flordia the rewards is for one character while the hunt or savage is for another. Im just really tired of waiting on new characters. Or nerf/buff the characters sooner. Im ready for change but it's like the devs are procrastinating.

Unknown

ibontherun wrote:

Im not sure if the "making it more dangerous to be at the top" is working.

In my Divine tourney bracket the winner had over 2200, the next closest person was in the 900s. Just to give you an idea of the rest of the bracket, I finished top 45 with about 430ish. I kept getting the same guys over and over again. Retaliation cycle kept most people grouped together...except those 2 up top. Maybe that's what it was supposed to do though

mine similar. About a day and a few hours before the end, I got up to 498 (fighting through various hits) before coming out of the game that was meant to get me over 500 (and the HP reward) to discover I'd been hit by 3 people for a total of 70 points. I came back the next day with most of my points attacked away, this time successfully reached about 520 (at which point I think I was in 7th place) and put up the 8 hour shield to carry me through to the end. At the time the guy in first place in our bracket was shielded at 2320, and the 2nd place guy had maybe 800. It turned out I hung on to a spot in the 6-15 rewards with my gigantic 520 points, and this was a bracket which began pretty early in the piece. It seems that if you can break above a certain point, you're probably mostly hitting shielded high point people and not having to worry about retaliations, but you have to be lucky (or have an incredibly intimidating team) to get there without being knocked down faster than you can build up. Meanwhile, even skipping like crazy I was struggling to be matched with people even worth above 25 points.