Changes to Versus Matchmaking [Update]

bknfoodie

udonomefoo wrote:

Only reason I made it to 300 in smash hit was a couple defensive wins. Probably from other 2* teams who just got unlucky against my 94/94/140(hulk) team.

The MMR change just makes out-of-game communication more important than ever. And thus, screwing over transitional players two-fold. I'm a solid T5/T10 player, 400+days. The real problem is rewards NEED to be expanded, NOT MMR. Transitioners blame "the wall". But really, over time, this game has gotten pretty cutthroat. In the very least, alliance rewards need to be expanded so much. Even if they gave everyone that's in an alliance one 3* cover every PvP, It wouldn't change much really. It takes forever for a transitioning player to cover max a character due to vaulting/RNG/limited reward structure.

puppychow

darvish11 wrote:

I feel like that is at odds with what this game really is. Despite the fact that it takes forever to gain levels in this game, the game itself was still a fast paced mobile game that I can play anywhere if I have a couple of minutes & have service. Break time, commercials, bathroom, there is any number of times you could squeeze in a couple quick matches. Now the fights themselves feel like a grind, where as before the only thing you were grinding out was your score (if that makes sense) it was a grind to get a good score,but you could squeeze in matches almost anywhere or any time you randomly had 5 - 10 minutes to play. There was several instances during the hulk pvp that i started up my game , cycled through 20 or so skips & just set my phone down and did something else. The game itself feels like a drag now, instead of being a fun game that has a pretty bad scoring system ( in both modes).

I totally agree w/ ya. The game, as I see it personally, was originally a casual game that ppl played for a few minutes per session. But somewhere along the way, MPQ morphed into a money making machine that tries to encourage sale of more cover packs, slots, shields, and heal packs. It seems to me that the management is under pressure to generate more revenue from ownership, and the game is suffering as a result.

puppychow

Vohnkar wrote:

I play on PC (Steam Account here) and I usually do it while wahtching some stream or waiting queues in other games (Hots, lol, and the likes). Now the matches are quite harder, I have to pay more attention and they will be longer after the change, so we will see how much I can play.

The nerfs to X-Force are a pin for me (is my strongest char), but I could live with it if the MM system wasn't so frustrating. I've been trying to climb on daredevil event with my still usefull X-force hitting 4k+ with green, and is quite hard facing since the 100 points maxed teams, so I can't imagine what I will do when I don't have that power on my roster :S

Also a steam player here. Profile: http://steamcommunity.com/id/puppychow/

I don't see xf changes to be THAT problematic, as long as you got other usable characters in your roster. Heck, his black ability, while the AP drain will be eliminated, got a major boost in terms of damage output. Depending on the board, his SS will deliver a knockout punch on a full health character.

And regarding facing other players' max teams, everyone is in the same boat. If people can't field an effective thorevine team anymore, players will have to look for the next best available teamup. Now is the time to experiment before character changes become live on 4/17.

Unknown

Here my results on Daredevil pvp : I have a lvl 94 2* roster and after clearing the seed teams I got 166 wall of Death with 95 pts , so again after Hulk pvp , I can not play longer , this bad changes will last how long dev's ?

Actually you let run messed up MMR for 2 pvp events , who I clearly cannot play and will definitively impact on my chances to reach 4000 pts to get the 10 heroic's pack.

So hurry and make pvp playable again .

PuceMoose

Pretty miserable experience so far in the current Blind Judgement tournament. I hit some sort of bubble where every team except for one had a 250+ X Force, and most of them 250+ 4Thor and 200+ Daredevil. My highest leveled 4 star is level 70. Unfortunately, one player with a 94 Ares/94 oBW/110 Daredevil managed to get trapped in my queue/bubble. Skip after skip after skip yielded the same 8 players, so I hit the poor 94 team over and over (I think six times total in a period of 20 minutes). I normally don't do that kind of thing, but I had no choice - no other reasonable matches appeared, and it was the same matchups even after hundreds spent on skips. This wasn't a fight for a lofty 600 or 700 points either - I was trying to make it over 400 points.

On the positive side, I did notice the improvement in point losses; I got hit five times, lost four times, and still came out with only negative nine to my rating.

Moon Roach

In Shield Simulator, where Wolveroach has a total of 305 points, I was just matched up against GYPSY DANGER, for 50. I didn't give it a go, anyone with a level 270 She-Thor and level 260 Kingpin + 1 would probably wipe out my best team of OBW, level 104 2/5/1 Doom and level 156 1/5/1 X-Force. Just by existing. Before I made my second move.

I don't think that was actually a very good match for me.

fmftint

I wouldn't mind so much the endless stream of 290 feature, 270 Xforce, ??? from 200 points on up, if they were +40 point matches. Problem is they are 18 point matches.

MikeG72

I'm going to be hard-pressed to even hit 300 in Blind Justice after making it to nearly 400 in Smash Hit. Not fun at all.

Lee T

I barely managed to hit 400 in Smash Hit through a lucky streak of defensive win, now I'm again facing mostly 166+ trios with my 94 2* roster (my Hulk was 100 and my Daredevil is 94). I suppose I'm gonna hope I'll get defensive wins and/or get beaten by other 2* again, because it's hard to find them in this forest of 166/270.

Unknown

Pulled top 100 in Heavy Metal instead of top 25 that I usually get due to time constraints, got 26th in Smash Hit instead of top 25 due to time constraints.

I don't think placing is any more difficult, just a longer process than before. Instead of joining with 12 or 8 or 4 hours to go join with a day and 12h to go and play to 500 like you would play at 700 and above, and then let your health packs come back. Get to what you want to get to to shield, and then let your health packs regen again, and now you basically have the same game you had before.

d0nk3y

Puce Moose wrote:

Pretty miserable experience so far in the current Blind Judgement tournament. I hit some sort of bubble where every team except for one had a 250+ X Force, and most of them 250+ 4Thor and 200+ Daredevil.

I'm gonna need an adult to explain to me how this new MMR system is supposed to be anything but absolutely crack-whacky. I'm running a 144 DD (so boosted to like 240 or something) and 166s for the other two. I beat the three bots and get immediately matched against 200+ level DD, 200+ level XForce and some flavor of level 133 or higher partner. A few hours later, I come back in and play skip-to-my-lou and happen to get a 220 DD / 55 Patch / 94 OBW into my crosshairs. I squish that team and check that node again - now I'm matched against a 270 DD / 250 XForce / 166 LThor. There's not even a semblance of consistency to this new system.

What I'd really like to see from Demiurge is some sort of admission that blowing away the hidden MMR had some really unexpected results, that they need a month or more of play data to get the new system accurate and that they'll compensate the players for what is essentially an entire PvP season lost. Without some sort of communication telling us why this system is all jacked up, nobody's going to play and they'll never get the data they need to resolve the issues.

Cabol

After getting destroyed in Smash Hit (see my thread I put up to see how dumb it was), I had a hope that Blind Justice would be better since I posted all time highs in Heavy Metal. Haven't even hit 200 points and this comes up:


I've already spent about 100 ISO to find a potentially winnable match. My roster has lazy Thor, Daredevil, Hood, R&G, Gamora, and Deadpool at lvl 115 for my top covers so no idea why this is still happening.

pchuan11

Cabol wrote:

After getting destroyed in Smash Hit (see my thread I put up to see how dumb it was), I had a hope that Blind Justice would be better since I posted all time highs in Heavy Metal. Haven't even hit 200 points and this comes up:


I've already spent about 100 ISO to find a potentially winnable match. My roster has lazy Thor, Daredevil, Hood, R&G, Gamora, and Deadpool at lvl 115 for my top covers so no idea why this is still happening.

I don't know why are you complaining. I will be happy to fight this team since is worth so many points!!!

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

Pulled top 100 in Heavy Metal instead of top 25 that I usually get due to time constraints, got 26th in Smash Hit instead of top 25 due to time constraints.

I don't think placing is any more difficult, just a longer process than before. Instead of joining with 12 or 8 or 4 hours to go join with a day and 12h to go and play to 500 like you would play at 700 and above, and then let your health packs come back. Get to what you want to get to to shield, and then let your health packs regen again, and now you basically have the same game you had before.

Well, since PvP is inherently competitive it also cannot be the case that everyone is worse off. Somebody had to have benefited if enough people suffered. From what I can tell shield hopping is less effective than before, and trying to make a charge at the end is generally very ineffective now (unless you got a brand new bracket). All the usual tricks still work, perhaps in decreased capacity but that applies to everyone else trying to the same tricks too.

ZootSax

I figure the best way to illustrate the current matchmaking is to post my actual matchups. For reference, my Daredevil is 1/2/2 and leveled as high as I can make him. Besides that, I have a Level 110 Hulk, a Level 100 Squirrel Girl and a bunch of Level 94's. Also for reference, my all-time high score in PVP is ~425 points--my typical score is in the ~325-350 range. I've finished top 25 twice and top 100 two other times, but otherwise I've never placed well in PVP through 200+ days of play (which isn't surprising, given my roster, and which I'm not necessarily bothered by--I only point it out for reference).

I started the event tonight with three see teams. After beating them, I was at 70 points and my three matchups were:
Iron Mayne: Daredevil (70-1/1/0), Spiderman (166), Patch (166)
Yamagyeto: Daredevil (290), Psylocke (166), Patch (166)
Nick-Thor: Daredevil (70-3/5/5), Hood (166), X-Force (226-5/5/3)

Seven skips (the first team might have been beatable with boosts, but I chickened out since I wasn't even at 100 points, yet, much less something worth taking risks at) (all with DD + 2 166+ characters) gets me to a team of no more than level 100, which I beat. This raises me to 92 points. That node is immediately replaced by:
calbert183: Daredevil (259), Spiderman (166), Patch (166)

Now, from the description of changes to Season XIII, one goal of the match making change was to make "(the) experience of suddenly hitting a wall and seeing much harder teams is reduced. The upper bound on how difficult a team we match you with gradually increases as it becomes harder to find good matches for you, so you can still expect matches to get harder as you climb higher in an event."

Considering that's one of their stated goals, the fact that a ~94 roster has 10 of its first 14 matches against 166+ rosters makes me conclude their new MMR has completely failed its objective. The fact that three of the other four are all seed teams only makes the comparison worse.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here and my experience is no different than what others have already posted, but I figure the more people post concrete evidence of the systems obvious flaws, the quicker we can get back to something more reasonable...or at least restoring the old "166 wall" to a more reasonable progression than 70 points...

Unknown

Fromgard wrote:

Here my results on Daredevil pvp : I have a lvl 94 2* roster and after clearing the seed teams I got 166 wall of Death with 95 pts , so again after Hulk pvp , I can not play longer , this bad changes will last how long dev's ?

Actually you let run messed up MMR for 2 pvp events , who I clearly cannot play and will definitively impact on my chances to reach 4000 pts to get the 10 heroic's pack.

So hurry and make pvp playable again .

This is my first post. I've been playing the game for 195 days. I have 11 94 2* & 3* characters which make up the bulk of my team (55 slots). Until the recent upgrade, I was finally able to play PVP successfully (up to about 400 points). Then I ran into the same wall Fromgard described. I found that if I wait awhile, I can SKIP my way through to a battle (usually two 94s) that I can at least participate in. But of course that costs ISO. Lots and lots of ISO.

I had finally hit 4000 points on the second to last day of the last season. Now, I can only win battles if someone in my level range attacks me and wins, or if I spend thousands of ISO, which is not going to happen. I have been completely addicted to this wonderful game, so much that I have even budgeted actual dollars to by gold coins monthly. (<-Sucker, I know)

I'm trying not to be negative, I thought I should say something in case the devs want feedback to how this rev is affecting gameplay and ultimately limiting my motivation and ability to spend actual money in the game.

Juandmp

I dont know how can you face a team of full 3* or more with just 98 points when you dont even have a lvl 166 of your own

Azoic

If they want to keep this **** system, they need to lower all the rewards big time. At this rate, 700 pts should be the 4*, 600 for 3* considering most folks can't find a team to they are able to fight.

It is like they don't want us to play their game. Rather than playing (maybe buying health?) , people are stopping since the opponenes are 2-3 times their lvl, so not a chance in hell to win. And yah, some of them are still only worth 18 pts, so they would just laugh and retaliate, making you lose pts if you miraculously had won.

CaseyJones

ZootSax wrote:

Now, from the description of changes to Season XIII, one goal of the match making change was to make "(the) experience of suddenly hitting a wall and seeing much harder teams is reduced. The upper bound on how difficult a team we match you with gradually increases as it becomes harder to find good matches for you, so you can still expect matches to get harder as you climb higher in an event."

Considering that's one of their stated goals, the fact that a ~94 roster has 10 of its first 14 matches against 166+ rosters makes me conclude their new MMR has completely failed its objective. The fact that three of the other four are all seed teams only makes the comparison worse.

I coudn't agree more. There is basically nothing more to say. I play with Daredevil 2-5-1 on 103 lvl with buff, Xforce 160 and Deadpool 140 - my strongest chars. Hit "the wall" (166/270 teams) just after seed teams and used insane number of iso on skips to barely get to 300 points. If this matchmaking stays I no longer see a point to play PVP if it is almost impossible to get first token reward. Not to mention different rewards. Before changes in matchmaking quite often I was able to get to over 600 points and place around 50-100 in the event - with the exactly same two chars. New MMR is such a disappointment to me. Thank you.

Nooneelsesname

Phantron wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Pulled top 100 in Heavy Metal instead of top 25 that I usually get due to time constraints, got 26th in Smash Hit instead of top 25 due to time constraints.

I don't think placing is any more difficult, just a longer process than before. Instead of joining with 12 or 8 or 4 hours to go join with a day and 12h to go and play to 500 like you would play at 700 and above, and then let your health packs come back. Get to what you want to get to to shield, and then let your health packs regen again, and now you basically have the same game you had before.

Well, since PvP is inherently competitive it also cannot be the case that everyone is worse off. Somebody had to have benefited if enough people suffered. From what I can tell shield hopping is less effective than before, and trying to make a charge at the end is generally very ineffective now (unless you got a brand new bracket). All the usual tricks still work, perhaps in decreased capacity but that applies to everyone else trying to the same tricks too.

Almost everyone is worse off since it's so much harder to reach progression rewards in individual events, thereby taking longer to get season progression rewards. The people who aren't worse off will still get the same rewards they always did and didn't gain any benefit other than greater separation from the pack.

Despite what they've said, I think the devs did all this to try to stop the shenanigans. All they did was cause players to activate super shenanigans. The game is now worse. The cure is worse than the disease.

Devs, just let them do it. We don't care. We'll take the progression rewards and place wherever we place.

You're cutting off your nose to spite your face with these changes.