Changes to Versus Matchmaking

Demiurge_Will

Hi, all,

Will here from Demiurge to talk about some changes to Versus matchmaking that you can expect starting with the SMASH HIT event that starts today, 4/7.

Quick summary of the changes:

• We’re reducing the amount of points that you lose in a Versus loss by 20%.
• We’re changing the matchmaking search parameters to more strictly limit how much harder your opponents can be (until you climb closer to the top and run out of matches worth plenty of points).
• We’re making Kamala Khan the reward for the Versus event that starts 4/9.

Details:
We ran a new Versus matchmaking system during this weekend’s Heavy Metal event. It fixed a bunch of bugs and addressed the aims that we outlined in an earlier post. But after listening to your feedback and comparing Heavy Metal to what’s happened so far in the Kamala Khan that followed (which we ran with the old matchmaking system), there are a number of adjustments that we want to make.

Part of the difficulty in improving matchmaking is that advanced players are used to a large chunk of their points coming from repeatedly stomping weaker teams. Many of you have asked to bring back that feature of the old matchmaking system. As the 4-star environment fills out, and more players are playing with maxed or nearly-maxed 3-star teams, those matches become more unfair and that experience becomes worse for beginning players. It’s not a sustainable situation for the long-term health of the game.

It was the intent of the old matchmaking system to match you with similar opponents (just like most other matchmaking systems), and it initially did that. Over time, though, the hidden rating that the old system used became more and more divorced from actual team strength or player skill, and we all got used to finding very easy matches at the start of events.

We still expect players with better-developed rosters to wind up on top (as, by and large, they did in Heavy Metal). But those players don’t have to be matched with the weakest players, causing first-time players to lose dozens of times for every match they win, in order to accomplish that.

That said, we want to make things easier at intermediate and high levels of play than they were during Heavy Metal, and we’re making two changes that do that.

First, we’re reducing how many points a loss costs. Previously, if you had 800 or fewer points in an event, a loss would cost you less points than your opponent gained, using this fomula: [points your opponent gained] * [your points] / 800. We’re changing this so that if you have 1000 or fewer points in an event, a loss costs you [points your opponent gained] * [your points] / 1000. (Above 1000 points, you’ll lose as many points as your opponent gains.)

Second, we’re reducing the maximum difficulty of opponents we send you, when there are enough available opponents to allow that. Players who were already seeing only opponents of their level and below in Heavy Metal won’t notice much difference here, but this will help players that are between the 2-star level cap and the 3-star cap, or between the 3-star cap and the 4-star cap.

These changes will take effect with the SMASH HIT Versus event that starts today, 4/7.

And because these changes take some time to get used to, we’re offering Kamala Khan covers again as a reward this weekend.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about how it feels to play with these new changes.