Changes to Versus Matchmaking [Update]

JamieMadrox

Nooneelsesname wrote:

If I need to buy X Force covers, I just want to know. If he's getting nerfed and I don't need to I just want to know.

But I don't want to buy X Force covers and then have him nerfed for 10% resell of what I paid or just sit here while everyone who got X Force when it was super easy dominates, especially now that I don't get to dominate the tier below me.

They've already said he's overpowered, so expect changes that make him weaker.

Ducky

I feel like the constant MMR tweaks are just band-aid fixes for a system that is inherently flawed. Instead of trying to create an even playing field that tries to make the current system fair, change the system.

spccrain

Xforce thing off topic. He's fine. Yes he's strong... He should be. IMO a 4* should be able to thwamp 2 3*s, a 3* 2 2* etc. Not the point though.

Matchmaking by roster defeats the point of progressing.

GrimSkald

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Nooneelsesname wrote:

If I need to buy X Force covers, I just want to know. If he's getting nerfed and I don't need to I just want to know.

But I don't want to buy X Force covers and then have him nerfed for 10% resell of what I paid or just sit here while everyone who got X Force when it was super easy dominates, especially now that I don't get to dominate the tier below me.

They've already said he's overpowered, so expect changes that make him weaker.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. They said he was "above the power level they expect for 4*s, but not as much as GT was." So the question is "how much?" Honestly, some characters are going to be above, and some characters are going to be below the power level they expect for a certain type of character. I feel fairly sure that 3* Thor, for example, is above the standard power level for 3*s, but not so much that they will nerf him.

I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic about this, myself. It may be they leave him alone as the best character in the game. It may be they do a small nerf on him (remove the opponent drain, or your gain, but not both from "Surgical Strike," for example,) and he's still eminently playable. Or they may nerf him into uselessness like Sentry. I guess we'll see. However I do think it is possible they won't change him. In my head it is something to the tune of 70%/30% with the 70% being that they will nerf him.

Basically I'm saying that they will probably nerf him, but there is the possibility they won't. I'm going to hold off on dumping a lot of Iso into mine until I get a good grasp on what's going on. That, and the new matchmaking is going to make me hold off on leveling him.

simonsez

Cryptobrancus wrote:

If days played is the defining metric then the guy who started first will always be on top no matter what

Except it's not the defining metric; not even close. Just having the game on your phone for more days doesn't mean you're busting your **** in every event to get top 5 placements every time.

I was far from being one of the early adopters of this game. I remember back when I first tried the old sim battles, after a few battles with my half-leveled 1*s, I ran into an opponent with lv141 3*s. It was both awe-inspiring and a little depressing. I figured if someone was that far ahead of me at that point, I'd always be behind the curve. But I liked the game mechanics, so I didn't stress it and just kept playing. And thanks to obsessive play on my part, and gameplay changes alienating and chasing off many of those who were initially ahead of me, now I'm on the other side of that. And I feel like I'm just part of the cycle. Now they need to chase ME off to make room for the people who've come after me.

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.

Strength of roster, definitely. Depth of roster is still not much of a factor in PVP. It can help with the featured character, and it helped when multiple characters are boosted, but it's almost irrelevant in most PVPs, because, with only a handful of exceptions, your +2 are doing 99% of the work in PVP, and the featured is just sort of there to block and tank a few colors.

The long and short of it is that the net effect of this is going to be me playing less PVP. You may lose a lot of the less invested PVP players, and that could make death bracketing a lot more common. I can tell I'm going to be getting attacked constantly by 270s, and as long as that keeps happening, PVP is simply not going to be any more fun for me than it is for the 94s getting hit by 166s. And, right now, there's very little incentive to max my 4*s, considering it would hurt me in PVE (since it will either scale to my 270s or I can lose access to them) and, now, not really help me all that much in PVP.

The trouble with these PVP changes is that they are providing the game with an EXTREMELY strong disincentive for players to develop and level their characters. You lose your advantage in PVP, you gain no advantage in PVE, why even bother leveling them? Are we going to start seeing people with extremely developed rosters that cap at 50th level dominating events?

Unknown

All of this is too little too late. I'd given up on the PVE grind a few months ago and DDQ and PVP was the only thing keeping my interest. But after the latest change and the surge of 4* I've finally uninstalled the game after 510 days of play. My typical climb to 500 was greeted with over 15 attacks for -170+ points over the course of a few hours with more than a day left in the event. No reason I should have to work harder and play more often than I ever have all to earn the same rewards that someone on day 30 with far more free time (and money) can earn. I'm all for a fair fight but the change was an obvious ploy to get high level players to buy more shields. I also just sank 300K iso into 4hor and it did nothing to improve my chances at placing high. Maybe in another 6 months I'll be able to level Prof X. So at this point the struggle far outweighs the fun/addition.

turul

-
Yes, requesting in-game warning when leveling up characters, it gives you disadvantages mostly.

Demiurge_Will

Colognoisseur wrote:

They have nobody on the dev team that plays like the 0.5% and therefore what motivates us is as difficult for Will to understand as it is for me to understand the difficulty in creating an easy and hard PvP bracket. I don't code so I don't know. The devs don't play like the 0.5% so they don't know.

For what it's worth, there are a number of people on the team in top 50 alliances, and I have a couple coworkers that probably qualify as the top 0.1%. I personally make a special effort to try to stay in touch with the experience of newer players by resetting my game periodically, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things I say sound tone-deaf to folks like you playing at a high level because of that, but there are people that have my ear that understand high-end play well. My job is to design for all players, and a single person can't play as all players, so we talk to each other a lot.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

They have nobody on the dev team that plays like the 0.5% and therefore what motivates us is as difficult for Will to understand as it is for me to understand the difficulty in creating an easy and hard PvP bracket. I don't code so I don't know. The devs don't play like the 0.5% so they don't know.

For what it's worth, there are a number of people on the team in top 50 alliances, and I have a couple coworkers that probably qualify as the top 0.1%. I personally make a special effort to try to stay in touch with the experience of newer players by resetting my game periodically, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things I say sound tone-deaf to folks like you playing at a high level because of that, but there are people that have my ear that understand high-end play well. My job is to design for all players, and a single person can't play as all players, so we talk to each other a lot.

Someone like me who has a 200 xforce and 6 maxed 3* and everyone else is at level 100 was being matched against 270 4*. That last PVP was not enjoyable at all so I ask why would someone with my roster continuously get matched against maxed 4*'s when I can't compete with them? Can you go into more detail on what classifies the "next tier" player? Also with the old method I was able to get to 900 with 2 shields. The Heavy Metal I was able to get to 800 with 2 shields, but that was because of the weekend. During the week I don't know if I can reach those points because of work.

orionpeace

Will,

By design, you are stating that having a higher leveled and covered roster is not intended to provide an easier climb in PvP. Having 3* rosters battle 3* rosters is a harder climb than 2* rosters battling 2* rosters. So, while with a significant increase in time played the 3* player can climb higher, it is now possible for a 2* player to be in the top 50 and for very few if any 3* players to even see that player.

All that time collecting covers, ISO and HP and it offers very little advantage in achieving rewards. And I'm not talking about the top .5%. I'm talking about players like me who have about 10 maxed covered, but no maxed leveled 3* and one covered maxed 4* around level 160.

My competition for placement is a player I can't see, can't attack and who is virtually immune to attacks from 3* rosters.

How is that fair? How is that really a competition? What are you trying to tell a player in my position?

And most importantly, what are you using for your definition of "progress"?

Cause right now, adding more covers and spending more ISO feels like it would be a mistake, a progression towards an even more difficult game, where I get fewer and fewer rewards unless I am willing to pony up way more HP and time.

SnowcaTT

ecir2002 wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

They have nobody on the dev team that plays like the 0.5% and therefore what motivates us is as difficult for Will to understand as it is for me to understand the difficulty in creating an easy and hard PvP bracket. I don't code so I don't know. The devs don't play like the 0.5% so they don't know.

For what it's worth, there are a number of people on the team in top 50 alliances, and I have a couple coworkers that probably qualify as the top 0.1%. I personally make a special effort to try to stay in touch with the experience of newer players by resetting my game periodically, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things I say sound tone-deaf to folks like you playing at a high level because of that, but there are people that have my ear that understand high-end play well. My job is to design for all players, and a single person can't play as all players, so we talk to each other a lot.

Someone like me who has a 200 xforce and 6 maxed 3* and everyone else is at level 100 was being matched against 270 4*. That last PVP was not enjoyable at all so I ask why would someone with my roster continuously get matched against maxed 4*'s when I can't compete with them? Can you go into more detail on what classifies the "next tier" player? Also with the old method I was able to get to 900 with 2 shields. The Heavy Metal I was able to get to 800 with 2 shields, but that was because of the weekend. During the week I don't know if I can reach those points because of work.

Ditto on my experience, and several others in the matchmaking decision thread.

The 3*-4* transition STARTS (and ends?) with X-force. You get his covers first, and he is strongest 4*. So you buy (or fight for) more first. I see tons and tons out there like ecir and myself: a non-max X-force and four 166's for me, no other 4* is anywhere close to being relevant.

And like Ben Grimm has mentioned - this hoses your scaling in PVE, but folks in this range seem fine to give up that PVE high placement for the next progression - more common PVP high placement. Now having one character over 166 is going to get me destroyed by the 270's. The last event I had to run many, many more matches - I thought that was one thing the devs were trying to avoid? Or should PVP -be- a grind now?

As someone with a one good 4*, give me the current PVP system with no 4*'s allowed to let me try to slowly work my way to a 4* roster. Let there be a PVP with 4*'s allowed that has an easier transition to 4*: there would be a place after the 3*'s have finally picked up some covers in the 3* only PVP. I'd much rather see that.

Once again, I cannot agree with Ben Grimm more. Being hit by 270/270/x over and over with mostly 166's is no more fun than it was when I was hit by 166/166/x over and over with mostly 94's.

nyark

Here is a simple idea.

Every PVP you can choose from 2 levels of difficulty:
4* which would basically be the current PVP setup you can use anybody
3* you can only use 3* or less characters, the rewards would be slightly less good like no 4* progression reward

You could even add a 2* tier to help out the ultra-newbies if you are still worried about them

Maybe you can play both levels if you want but only 4* counts towards the season. People just choose themselves which one they want to play so no complicated coding necessary.

spccrain

This is just becoming frustrating now...just because you talk to ppl that are in the top .5% doesn't mean you know what its like to be there. Some of us do have a low lvl account so we do see both sides of the coin and I must say that I struggle alot less on my low account than I do on my 495 day account. Yes a change needs to be made but this isn't it. Make it fair for all players, don't punish your longest standing customers by making the game harder for them. It makes no sense and destroys the very reason people play...If I struggle to make the 2-3* transition then struggle to make the 3-4* transition then struggle against the other 4*s only then all I'm doing is struggling! I do that enough in RL i dont need it in a game. We fought our way out of the rabble and climbed to the top so we didnt have to struggle anymore. I love this game and have obviously devoted alot of time to it but I wont be able to play anymore if these changes take hold. I simply dont have time to wait for health packs after every 2 matches from 67 pts on. There's no incentive to play if all i do is bash my head against the wall and get the same rewards as the 1-2* ppl. Consider my weighted proposal seriously. Please that's all I ask. it seems fair to me and would solve alot of the issues discussed here today.

udonomefoo

Best idea I have seen so far is to create a formula to limit the amounts of points lost by the low level teams as the high level teams stomp through them. This takes away the demoralizing part of the low level players getting smashed before they can even get to 400 and allows the high level guys to still have their fun by blowing through the low tier before getting to the real action.

Basically, take the average of the winning teams players vs the avg of the losing team and use that ratio or a percentage of it to determine points lost.

94 beats 94 = 1.0 = lose full points

166 beats 94 = 0.56 = lose 56% of points gained.

Only problem I could see arising is an influx in "total points" that could bork the current progression rewards.

Unknown

As more and more people emerge above the rabble and climb to the top what then? Should everyone with a pair of 270's get top 10 just because they showed up to an event? It is just not sustainable for players to say "I have the best team, give me and my brothers our well deserved rewards each week."

The devs are making a change to try to make the game more fair across all levels of play. They are trying to get it right using many different tools, matchmaking tests, MMR changes, reward adjustments etc. Every change has winners and losers. If a change is fair and helps a majority of players then it is good for the game, if it makes it harder a specific set of players then it is still good for the game.

I personally found Heavy Metal very hard, and I personally think there should be a normal tier, and hard tier with rewards to match.
I don't however want them to make the game harder for everyone else just so it can be easier for me. And I don't want them to make the game super easy just because I earned a character in the past and have been using it to my advantage the whole time.

Unknown

I would really like to go off on a massive rant about what a combination of really bad decisions occurred in the running of Heavy Metal, but this isn't really the time or the place. Suffice to say blowing up MMR without really knowing what it was going to do during an event rewarding a new character that took place over a holiday weekend when nobody was around to keep an eye on what should have been a very expected kittystorm was not smart, and the fact that you trotted out a recently unvaulted IM40 for said event without even attempting to fix in any way what is one of the most obviously outdated characters in the whole game is just shameless. Poor showing all around.

DuckyV wrote:

I feel like the constant MMR tweaks are just band-aid fixes for a system that is inherently flawed. Instead of trying to create an even playing field that tries to make the current system fair, change the system.

I think in everything being tossed around here that this statement cuts very much to the heart of the matter. You can tweak MMR and point bubbles and points for wins/losses, but the real problem is that the system itself is, to use Ducky's spot on language, "inherently flawed". In attempting to combine competitive elements of score accumulation, brackets, ladders, and pseudo-matchmaking, you've created a bizarre Frankensystem that barely works. All you have to do is look at the shenanigans that the system forces people into to compete, from tanking to roster manipulation to shield-hopping and en masse win-trading collusion, to see how poorly this system functions across almost all ranges. It doesn't need to be modified, it needs to be detonated.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

I would really like to go off on a massive rant about what a combination of really bad decisions occurred in the running of Heavy Metal, but this isn't really the time or the place. Suffice to say blowing up MMR without really knowing what it was going to do during an event rewarding a new character that took place over a holiday weekend when nobody was around to keep an eye on what should have been a very expected kittystorm was not smart, and the fact that you trotted out a recently unvaulted IM40 for said event without even attempting to fix in any way what is one of the most obviously outdated characters in the whole game is just shameless. Poor showing all around.

DuckyV wrote:

I feel like the constant MMR tweaks are just band-aid fixes for a system that is inherently flawed. Instead of trying to create an even playing field that tries to make the current system fair, change the system.

I think in everything being tossed around here that this statement cuts very much to the heart of the matter. You can tweak MMR and point bubbles and points for wins/losses, but the real problem is that the system itself is, to use Ducky's spot on language, "inherently flawed". In attempting to combine competitive elements of score accumulation, brackets, ladders, and pseudo-matchmaking, you've created a bizarre Frankensystem that barely works. All you have to do is look at the shenanigans that the system forces people into to compete, from tanking to roster manipulation to shield-hopping and en masse win-trading collusion, to see how poorly this system functions across almost all ranges. It doesn't need to be modified, it needs to be detonated.

So, in all seriousness, how should it work instead?

Nooneelsesname

spccrain wrote:

Xforce thing off topic. He's fine. Yes he's strong... He should be. IMO a 4* should be able to thwamp 2 3*s, a 3* 2 2* etc. Not the point though.

Matchmaking by roster defeats the point of progressing.

Since you think this is off topic this is the last thing I'll say on it.

I'm fine with X Force staying the way he is, I just want to know.

The reason I thought this was relevant is under the new system 4*s get to thwamp 3*s, 3*s don't get to thwamp 2*s. Which I think speaks to the point you're making with your last sentence.

spccrain

Cryptobrancus wrote:

As more and more people emerge above the rabble and climb to the top what then? Should everyone with a pair of 270's get top 10 just because they showed up to an event? It is just not sustainable for players to say "I have the best team, give me and my brothers our well deserved rewards each week."

The devs are making a change to try to make the game more fair across all levels of play. They are trying to get it right using many different tools, matchmaking tests, MMR changes, reward adjustments etc. Every change has winners and losers. If a change is fair and helps a majority of players then it is good for the game, if it makes it harder a specific set of players then it is still good for the game.

I personally found Heavy Metal very hard, and I personally think there should be a normal tier, and hard tier with rewards to match.
I don't however want them to make the game harder for everyone else just so it can be easier for me. And I don't want them to make the game super easy just because I earned a character in the past and have been using it to my advantage the whole time.

I'm not asking to show up and be given rewards. I still fight for my covers. It's just not fair to punish progress. It honestly SHOULD be easier as your roster gets better. Yes, you should still have to fight but you shouldn't have to fight as hard to get to 300 pts as you do to get to 1k. If you haven't experienced what the matchmaking for the top tier looks like then you don't know anything about it. How would you like beating Bacon_Magic then your next que is 270 XForce 166 Hood and that's what every single que looks like from 67pts until you finally decide you've had enough and just shield until the end at 673? Every fight drops at least 2 chars low enough that you have to use 2 health packs so after 2 battles you are drained and you've only gained 40-60 pts. Now you have to wait until packs regen in 3 hrs, so climbing 50 pts at a time every 3 hrs equates to it taking the entire duration of a PvP (hitting every 3 hrs) to reach 1000 pts (not counting getting hit constantly because you only see the same 10-15 ppl). It's a broken system that demands too much time from the higher players. Again I have no problem fighting for my rewards but my fight should at least equal the fight of those below me.