Changes to Versus Matchmaking [Update]

Der_Lex

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

The big flaw I see in the logic here is that anyone that has played up to now had to go through getting stomped on by better rosters until their roster was geed enough to compete. So why do the new guys get a pass now? I understand the desire to make the first time and new user experiences better, but do it somewhere other than PVP. I had to grind out the prologue and PVE constantly for months before I was ready to even place in 3* cover territory for PVP. Now we're catering to guys that are barely 2 months in and have 2* rosters. How does this make OUR user experience better?

New players today have it harder than new players did even a few months ago - there are a lot more players with more advanced rosters.

Fair point, but this does not answer the 'how does this make our user experience better' part of his question.

I'm certainly not opposed to making the game more welcoming for starting players, and don't mind fighting harder teams from the get-go, but if the previous event is any indication, we 3-4* transitioners can now expect a ton of attacks from 300 points onwards, and reducing points lost will not help much. I did manage to get 1k in Heavy Metal, but it was a highly frustrating experience that cost me a lot of time and HP in shields. If that is going to be the standard for players like myself from now on, I think a lot of us will give up on pvp and pergaps mpq altogether. It's simply not fun.

One suggestion I'd like to make is that players have to be within a certain margin of points to be visible to other players (say within 100 or 200 points), with the exception that any player with a score over 1000 is visible to all players with a 900+ score, to prevent becoming fully invisible if you climb high enough. This will help to prevent players losing 100+ points from attacks from much lower placed players while they're playing a match for 25 points, which is as unfair as stomping low-level players in its own way.

spccrain

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

The big flaw I see in the logic here is that anyone that has played up to now had to go through getting stomped on by better rosters until their roster was geed enough to compete. So why do the new guys get a pass now? I understand the desire to make the first time and new user experiences better, but do it somewhere other than PVP. I had to grind out the prologue and PVE constantly for months before I was ready to even place in 3* cover territory for PVP. Now we're catering to guys that are barely 2 months in and have 2* rosters. How does this make OUR user experience better?

New players today have it harder than new players did even a few months ago - there are a lot more players with more advanced rosters.

There is no way that is true. Yes there are more players but new people have it so much easier than when I started playing. I explained the reasons above. DPD alone is huge, then time slices (which reduces the ppl available by 4/5 thus killing the more ppl argument), new reward structure, shields, alliances, etc.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

If someone told me a year and a half ago that my reward for playing so much would be to face other similarly strong players for exactly the same rewards as new players then I'd have quit long before I did.

The strength and depth of your roster was still the most important deciding factor in who came out on top in Heavy Metal, and that will continue to be the case going forward.

Just a thought, I don't have the data to analyze, but the relationship between roster and placement might be different than what it appears on the the surface. A person with a well developed roster has it most likely due to the amount of time and effort they've put into the game and this type of person is more willing to struggle through challenges to achieve those higher ranks and earn the better rewards. "Willingness to put in effort" is a bit of an intangible, obviously, but I believe it probably played a bigger role in recent Heavy Metal placement than roster, and at the very least more than it is given credit for.

Demiurge_Will

fmftint wrote:

can you define, worth plenty of points?

Matchmaking runs a series of searches in order until we've found enough players to make up a batch of at least 5 opponents to send to you.

The first three rounds of searches are for matches worth ~20+ points (at the time we run the matchmaking search - you could win or lose points before you fight the opponent and therefore they're worth less or more than that). Then we look for matches worth increasingly less: ~18+ point matches, ~12+ point matches, and so on. At each step we let in players that are stronger relative to you as possible opponents for you.

Unknown

spccrain wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

The big flaw I see in the logic here is that anyone that has played up to now had to go through getting stomped on by better rosters until their roster was geed enough to compete. So why do the new guys get a pass now? I understand the desire to make the first time and new user experiences better, but do it somewhere other than PVP. I had to grind out the prologue and PVE constantly for months before I was ready to even place in 3* cover territory for PVP. Now we're catering to guys that are barely 2 months in and have 2* rosters. How does this make OUR user experience better?

New players today have it harder than new players did even a few months ago - there are a lot more players with more advanced rosters.

There is no way that is true. Yes there are more players but new people have it so much easier than when I started playing. I explained the reasons above. DPD alone is huge, then time slices (which reduces the ppl available by 4/5 thus killing the more ppl argument), new reward structure, shields, alliances, etc.

The 2* - 3* level gap is much larger, mStorm is a LOT worse, 3* and 4* characters have seen a lot of power creep, prologue healing is gone...

JamieMadrox

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

The big flaw I see in the logic here is that anyone that has played up to now had to go through getting stomped on by better rosters until their roster was geed enough to compete. So why do the new guys get a pass now? I understand the desire to make the first time and new user experiences better, but do it somewhere other than PVP. I had to grind out the prologue and PVE constantly for months before I was ready to even place in 3* cover territory for PVP. Now we're catering to guys that are barely 2 months in and have 2* rosters. How does this make OUR user experience better?

New players today have it harder than new players did even a few months ago - there are a lot more players with more advanced rosters.

I don't buy that excuse. I've supported a lot of the things you've said and done over the last year+, but I can't support that statement. I have a secondary account that is currently in the 1*-2* transition phase and it got there a lot quicker than my current account did. The only difference being that I spent $20 on HP to buy some roster slots. Otherwise, for the amount of time I've put in to that account, which is incredibly minimal, I'm much farther along than I was with my main account.

Unknown

Jamie Madrox wrote:

The big flaw I see in the logic here is that anyone that has played up to now had to go through getting stomped on by better rosters until their roster was geed enough to compete. So why do the new guys get a pass now? I understand the desire to make the first time and new user experiences better, but do it somewhere other than PVP. I had to grind out the prologue and PVE constantly for months before I was ready to even place in 3* cover territory for PVP. Now we're catering to guys that are barely 2 months in and have 2* rosters. How does this make OUR user experience better?

It wasn't ALWAYS this way. I dunno what day of play The Legend is on, but I remember a time when everyone was using OBW in PvP for Aggressive Recon and for healing. There was no XF and the best players were using C.Mags. In that day a team of Ares+OBW+Guest could get 2-3 covers if they tried. All these players are now near the top of the current system.

I personally have no problem with 2* rosters being able to compete and 4* rosters having to compete with themselves. It didn't meaningfully impact my placing in Heavy Metal, just the difficulty curve. Then again, I think Nintendo Hard is a good thing.

Hopefully this makes your user experience better by making 1000 more easily attainable with the score change.

DaveR4470

Will, for me the most frustrating thing (as a 2-3 transition team) isn't seeing overpowered teams, or getting beaten by teams of 240-level 4hor/Xforce/featured. It's when I work hard to get up into the 500-600 point range, stay unshielded, and come back to find that I've lost like 78 points.... from two losses to 240-level 4hor/Xforce/featured teams, who (of course) don't have much of a problem with my 94-level Ares/OBW/featured team.

That's an obtuse result, and it's all because you're using points achieved as a proxy for team strength. Which discriminates against people who actually play well and "outpunch" their own level. Is that the desired outcome here? You're leaving the 3* progression rewards at levels that are roughly twice what a 2* team should be expected to reasonably achieve (which, in my experience, is about 400-475 points) with the current matchmaking/points system.... and then designing the system so that 2* teams who approach that level are disproportionately beaten down when they lose to clearly and inarguably superior teams, unless they shield hop incessantly.

And, of course, this further locks out transitioners from top-100 alliances, who need every member to be putting in 600 points per event, unless they want to spend a lot of money with those incessant shield hops. Or unless they already have the 3* and 4* covers that are the rewards in these events.

And further, this gives higher-end players every incentive to jump in very late in the event, as then they'll see more "mature" 2* teams with higher point totals, which they can crush for disproportionately high rewards during the 0-400 phase of their climb. Which means that the 2* and 2-3 transition teams that are saying "hey, I might actually squeak into the top 100 this time!" go away for 12 hours and come back to find that there's 55 teams with over 1000 points and they're now #297. Plus, they've lost 98 points to 240-level X-force/Thor teams.

That's the flaw for me, and it's why I don't see much of a point to competing in PvP right now. I do enough to get my one event token, and that's that. And I think a lot of this has to do with the structural flaw in the point allocation system that I've noted. That's what you should be reconsidering. If that system works, then matchmaking essentially becomes irrelevant. If I face a hugely superior team, I have little to lose by trying to beat them, and everything to gain. Vice versa for much weaker teams. So if I want points, I'll HAVE to face teams of equivalent or slightly greater strength. And a 240-level team beating another 240-level team should award significantly more points than a 94-level team beating another 94-level team.

Just my two cents on this issue.

SnowcaTT

Demiurge_Will wrote:

MarCr wrote:

The biggest problem I had with the previous PVP was that I rushed off at the start and once I hit about 700 points all I could see was the same 5 people for about 12 hours, no mater how many times I skipped it was the same 5 people. At the start they gave me 40 points by the end about 4 each. I'm guessing it was because the matchmaking search parameters were so narrow that they were the only result. It made the game totally unplayable and I understand if I had of waited till later in the event the outcome would have been different as more people rose through the ranks. Is there anything in place to mitigate this problem?

This sounds like what you'd see if there aren't many other people in the event with scores as high as yours. That experience is going to be similar in both matchmaking systems. Like you say, your pool of opponents will change as other players rise through the ranks.

This is one of the biggest problems I've had for over my year playing this game. Is there any way to fix this?

Some of my team-mates only join the last 8 hours and run up using nothing but the weak opponents, and who can blame them? This system encourages waiting as late as possible to start going (unless you really want to time shield-hops), and having the best roster possible to squash smaller ones. Something should be done to make a more "sustained" PVP possible, not punish those who start earlier. [I've suggested having the amount of points you are worth drop every hour you are out there, for example - lots of other suggestions have been made.]

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

woopie wrote:

Issue probably arises when they have to start adding together season scores. Running concurrent seasons (choose easy/normal/hard at the beginning?) might be more than the server hamsters can handle. The question also becomes, do I care about competing for 4*s that aren't appreciably better than 3*s or do I want to pad my score for the end of season 10 packs?

You might not like my answer, but the "minor league" PvP shouldn't be part of any season score. Reasons: it'll keep vets from wasting their time with it, and keep the playing field open for transitioners; the main season prize is the 4*... transitioners don't need that yet; yes, they lose out on the 10 pack, but let's face it... that might net them two 3*s. During the season they'll have gotten 30 3*s from the DDQ. Is a 10 pack REALLY that big of a deal anymore?

Making everyone kick the transitioners out of their alliance is a terrible idea

Demiurge_Will

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Good question. A ceiling on the scores that are visible to a player creates "bubbles" where, if players get far enough ahead of the pack, they're invulnerable.

Not necessarily. It would 'simply' require that the top x% of scores are always visible to each other. So if you have a player who somehow runs all the way to 1500 with the next 10% of scorers all around 500, he's still visible to those players. But from the other side, if you have 0 pts in an event, the ceiling of visibility should be at the minimum score required for 50 point matches, whatever that is. So 0 might be able to see the 500 players, but can't see the 1500.

Thus you've eliminated the top of the leaderboard getting sniped by people just starting, which will lead to at least a little more satisfaction from the veteran/high scoring player.

Then you get a bubble that consists of a small group of players, rather than a single player.

At some point it starts to beg the question of how many protections should be put in place to make things easier for the top 0.5% of players.

spccrain

Jamie I love you. I've done the exact same thing and I'm on day 30(?) With a growing 2* roster and a few of the better 3*s....in 30 days...it took me until season 4 or 5 to get my first 166 with my main account. That's a huge difference in ease. I use my other account to see how the other side lives and the fact that I can easily pull an extra 700iso everyday from DPD is a huge game changer.

Demiurge_Will

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I have a secondary account that is currently in the 1*-2* transition phase and it got there a lot quicker than my current account did. The only difference being that I spent $20 on HP to buy some roster slots. Otherwise, for the amount of time I've put in to that account, which is incredibly minimal, I'm much farther along than I was with my main account.

Oh, yeah, we've greatly sped up the speed of progression for new players, in all kinds of ways. Definitely things are easier in that sense. But the goalposts have also moved. The distance between a beginner player and an average player has increased massively - that's what matters when we're talking about the matchmaking experience.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

If someone told me a year and a half ago that my reward for playing so much would be to face other similarly strong players for exactly the same rewards as new players then I'd have quit long before I did.

The strength and depth of your roster was still the most important deciding factor in who came out on top in Heavy Metal, and that will continue to be the case going forward.

That's not true the most important factor in coming out on top in Heavy Metal was shield hopping constantly not our rosters. I took me 4 hops to get 897 points when I'ld normally get to the 1100-1200 range with 4 hops. I had to start shielding at 600 in Heavy Metal when I normally shield at 900-1000 range because I was constantly getting sniped. If you guys are so head strong about the matchmaking changes, atleast reduce the cost of shields and reduce the shield timers.

Unknown

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

The big flaw I see in the logic here is that anyone that has played up to now had to go through getting stomped on by better rosters until their roster was geed enough to compete. So why do the new guys get a pass now? I understand the desire to make the first time and new user experiences better, but do it somewhere other than PVP. I had to grind out the prologue and PVE constantly for months before I was ready to even place in 3* cover territory for PVP. Now we're catering to guys that are barely 2 months in and have 2* rosters. How does this make OUR user experience better?

New players today have it harder than new players did even a few months ago - there are a lot more players with more advanced rosters.

I don't buy that excuse. I've supported a lot of the things you've said and done over the last year+, but I can't support that statement. I have a secondary account that is currently in the 1*-2* transition phase and it got there a lot quicker than my current account did. The only difference being that I spent $20 on HP to buy some roster slots. Otherwise, for the amount of time I've put in to that account, which is incredibly minimal, I'm much farther along than I was with my main account.

The 2* "handouts" made the 1-2 transition all but disappear, but that really has no bearing on the difficulty of the 3* transition, which has always been the most relevant transition between "competitive" and "not competitive"

spccrain

I realize I haven't offered a solution as of yet and that's the wrong way to go about it...so here's what I believe should happen.

Us 4*s should be able to stomp 2-3* transitioners because we have earned our place at the top...however I can see how that would lessen the morale of those players. To address that problem could you enact a "mercy" rule that would reduce the amount of pts lost from the 2-3* transitioners when attacked by a whale? I don't know how difficult the coding would be but I think that will make everyone happy.

For example:
I attack a 2-3*...he loses 5-10 pts instead of 25
Same 2-3* is attacked by another 2-3* he loses 25 like normal.

Fair enough?

simonsez

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Getting beat up might put some off, but it'll make many others want to fight more to improve

Reminds me of the underlying theme of the movie Whiplash... maybe the devs should check it out.

Unknown

The changes encourage a greater use of team organisation on chat programmes. The lack of findable players make timing your jumps with alliance mates so much more important than it was before. So does this mean you're dropping shield cooldowns as they were brought in to stop this kind of behaviour?


I should thank everyone who makes the game for bringing changes that I completely disagree with into the game this week, GTA V comes out on the PC next week and I can play it with out worrying if my shield is about to drop.

Demiurge_Will

adamLmpq wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

If someone told me a year and a half ago that my reward for playing so much would be to face other similarly strong players for exactly the same rewards as new players then I'd have quit long before I did.

The strength and depth of your roster was still the most important deciding factor in who came out on top in Heavy Metal, and that will continue to be the case going forward.

Just a thought, I don't have the data to analyze, but the relationship between roster and placement might be different than what it appears on the the surface. A person with a well developed roster has it most likely due to the amount of time and effort they've put into the game and this type of person is more willing to struggle through challenges to achieve those higher ranks and earn the better rewards. "Willingness to put in effort" is a bit of an intangible, obviously, but I believe it probably played a bigger role in recent Heavy Metal placement than roster, and at the very least more than it is given credit for.

Yeah, this is a good point, and something we try to account for when we look at the data. Time spent, matches played, and shield usage are some of the proxies we use for trying to estimate effort.

Unknown

Will - Can you address the situation with being targeted while in a match? There were several people in my alliance that would do a match for 20 points and when they came out they were hit for 100+ points. I think a nice balanced fix for this would be if you are in a match you can only be targeted X amount of times. 1 or 2 is understandable, but 3+ is pretty crazy.