A word on matchmaking

Unknown

If I can take a moment to interrupt the never-ending string of people complaining about nerfs, I'd be curious to know how people have been getting on with Matchmaking since the most recent fix. I have quite a strong positive opinion and experience of it myself but just wondering if I'm an isolated case.

Overall my average finishing score has gone from 3XX to 5XX and top 100 now seems relatively achievable even without shielding. I'm in 3* transition mode and I generally find the matches I am offered to follow a bell curve as I progress in ranking, and progress only becoming impossible up around 600/700 points or so, which I have no issues with. As a transitioner I don't expect to be competing for top ten spots so I'm fine with that.

Anyway just curious as to others experiences. All comments positive and negative are welcome but please include your details (IE highest levels in your roster, old vs new standings, etc)

Unknown

23 pages at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27107

Pretty similar experience to yours, though I've been going light on the PVP as of late.

MarvelMan

Consider yourself lucky. From what I see in my brackets the top scores havent changed a lot, but do seem to be slightly down. My personal experience is that achieving those scores requires more effort though.

Unknown

New matchmaking has decreased attacks on myself by a significant amount. I assume because 166 targets are actually available now when they weren't before.

My complaint would be once you reach a high enough score it seems to only match you with 5 point nodes now. This may be an artifact of high point people shielding for large portions of the event but still annoying.

fmftint

I'm a 3* player, just maxing out my 5th. I find I'm fighting strong teams earlier than I use to, max feature 166/166 or xforce/166, along with constant attacks starting around the low 200s. My overall scores are about where they were last season but placement has been higher. T50 last season, mostly T 25/10 this season

MarvelMan

fmftint wrote:

I'm a 3* player, just maxing out my 5th. I find I'm fighting strong teams earlier than I use to, max feature 166/166 or xforce/166, along with constant attacks starting around the low 200s. My overall scores are about where they were last season but placement has been higher. T50 last season, mostly T 25/10 this season

Not necessarily a good thing (although not necessarily a bad one either). Id attribute some of that higher placement because people who used to out score you have dropped the game.

ZootSax

As others have said, I still can basically score the same amount of points, but it's much more work now. My placement is roughly the same (45% of the time I get 2 standard tokens, 45% of the time I get a 2* reward and the other 10% I squeak into the Top 100 by being lucky in a low-scoring bracket) with me finishing in the 300-425 range, typically (I did hit 500, briefly, at one point in the event with the LazyThor prize, but it was such a feeding frenzy there that even 500pts put me well outside 150 and I was knocked back down to 300pts while my health packs recharged, regardless). I'm primarily a 2* guy who only has two characters (soon to be 3) above 94, and no one above 110.

My only complaint with the new match making is that I practically never see any non-maxed characters anymore. There's the three seeds and then a string of maxed 2* until I get to ~350-450, where suddenly it's all 166/270's, unless I spend ~500 iso to find another 2* guy. Occasionally, I'll see the featured character, a 94 and a 3* ~level 100-120, but otherwise teams with characters between levels 120 & 165 don't seem to exist anymore, nor do teams below level 94. About once or twice an event I'll see a 94 paired with an ~85-90 character, but it's extremely rare considering I play more than twice as many games to reach 300 or 400 points for the progression as I used to, at least once I get above 200.

Because of this, PVP now seems to have even fewer combinations of characters to go against than even PVE has. Again, outside of maybe a half dozen times for an entire event, I don't see anyone except OBW, MGThor, Ares, 2* Daken, MNMags, CStorm and 2* Wolverine (plus the featured character) until I hit the 166/270 people. My favorite part of the old match-making is that I could actually use my partially covered 3*'s against the random Level 30-60 teams you'd encounter. I never see any of those teams any more, so now if I'm not using my A-team, I'm losing the match (and/or getting pounded by higher level teams if I take to long to win with my b-team). If it weren't for the trivial PVE nodes, ~2/3 of my roster would go totally unused, and even there I have to only use teams like that between PVP events, or my substantially weaker defensive team is just too inviting of a target in the current PVP.

All in all, the current MMR isn't bad; it's just a little repetitive. Because of that, I wouldn't mind it being further tweaked. Ideally, I wouldn't see only maxed 94 teams until I hit the 200 progression, give or take, but the lesser teams I encountered wouldn't lose points for facing a roster much better than theirs (similarly, I wouldn't lose as many points below 200, from the 166 crowd (in the event to win Thor, I was losing at least 50pts every time I waited for my health packs to recharge and a sizable majority of the retaliation nodes were 166+ groups starting at the ~125 pt mark in the progression--if I can't face anyone below 94 after the seed teams, it's frustrating when I'm getting hammered by 166's so early in an event).

I apologize if I sound too negative here--I just finished facing similar MNMags/CStorm, Ares/OBW and Daken/Wolverine teams repeatedly for the past 20 or so minutes climbing to 400 in the Thor event

Unknown

My MMR seems to have reached a nice balance. I'm no longer seeing maxed 4* teams right out of the gate but I'm also not seeing a lot of 2* teams either. Mostly it's been transition teams with a 2* or maxed 3* occasionally, which fits my roster nicely, till about 5 or 600 points where I hit the same wall I always have. Even then some skipping will usually bring me a couple more high level transition teams to fight

Overall I'm pleased. The climb is a little slower, but I feel like I'm actually taking on teams on a more level playing field instead of trampling weak rosters or being matched against teams where there's no hope. I've even been able to up my average score a bit as well

MarvelMan

Cyanide icon wrote:

My MMR seems to have reached a nice balance. I'm no longer seeing maxed 4* teams right out of the gate but I'm also not seeing a lot of 2* teams either. Mostly it's been transition teams with a 2* or maxed 3* occasionally, which fits my roster nicely, till about 5 or 600 points where I hit the same wall I always have. Even then some skipping will usually bring me a couple more high level transition teams to fight

Overall I'm pleased. The climb is a little slower, but I feel like I'm actually taking on teams on a more level playing field instead of trampling weak rosters or being matched against teams where there's no hope. I've even been able to up my average score a bit as well

Do you ever vary your team? Are you using the same team for all battles?

Glad to hear your scores are going up. How does that translate to placement?

Im not being a ****, Im genuinely curious how others experiences compare to mine. My scores are about the same, placement is about the same but effort is WAY up (as are inbound attacks). And Ive found MM bubbles to be worse, such as I hit the same guy about 5 times in a row. He was there every other skip, and was the only one coming up with more points. I felt bad, but have very limited ability to get around it. I also noticed that I was in a retal war with a guy, who then bounced off my shield 3 times.....he shouldnt have been able to queue me that many times after I shielded (two would be fine...one retal, one pre-queued).

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Do you ever vary your team? Are you using the same team for all battles?

Glad to hear your scores are going up. How does that translate to placement?

Im not being a ****, Im genuinely curious how others experiences compare to mine. My scores are about the same, placement is about the same but effort is WAY up (as are inbound attacks). And Ive found MM bubbles to be worse, such as I hit the same guy about 5 times in a row. He was there every other skip, and was the only one coming up with more points. I felt bad, but have very limited ability to get around it. I also noticed that I was in a retal war with a guy, who then bounced off my shield 3 times.....he shouldnt have been able to queue me that many times after I shielded (two would be fine...one retal, one pre-queued).

Placement has been about the same, typically top 50. My climbing team is mostly patch and daken, but I'll throw in hood, or cage, or hulk especially towards the end. I have been caught in a few bubbles and reluctantly hit the same person a couple times to get as high as possible and shield till the end, lest the sharks devour me

Unknown

Buddy in my alliance managed to score 750 using only 94s (full covered 2 and 3*), such thing didn't happen usually unless you shield hopped few times. I managed to hit that number too with average levels of 120+. Been seeing both 2* (nearly every time with pumped up a bit Thor, not loaner), maxed 3* team and lots of people in between, I don't think I saw single 270 (barring 166+boost Thor, but mine had 120+boosts anyway) and not a single non maxed 94. Overall very enjoyable climb and scoring, nice being able to hit 50HP reward node. Placed (barely) in t50.

Unknown

I have been placing pointswise about half what I had been getting before the changes. Usually I would get to 500-600, ending in the 500s. Placement in top 150. Now I'm getting to 200-300 before seeing the teams I'm facing be in average fully leveled 4* or 4*/3* teams. I have some 2* fully leveled, and some 3* around level 90-100. No maxed 3* or 4*. My placement is now top 300. I can skip 20+ matches, all of them being 4* fully leveled.

I'm not doing Thor event. Not doing Gamora. Won't do next pvp. Had enough with pvp, unless something changes again. It sucks, because pvp was getting me covers.

Azoic

My main gripe is that even 600+ you can cycle a bunch and keep seeing the same people. And when you are the easiest targets, people will just keep on hitting you.

Placement has seemed easier though

Unknown

My main problem is this:

As a finished transitioner that has maxed 10+ 3*, what are you supposed to do with the 1/2 star characters other then DPD when you are getting matched with 166ers right out of the gate?

MarvelMan

Nivrax wrote:

Buddy in my alliance managed to score 750 using only 94s (full covered 2 and 3*), such thing didn't happen usually unless you shield hopped few times. I managed to hit that number too with average levels of 120+. Been seeing both 2* (nearly every time with pumped up a bit Thor, not loaner), maxed 3* team and lots of people in between, I don't think I saw single 270 (barring 166+boost Thor, but mine had 120+boosts anyway) and not a single non maxed 94. Overall very enjoyable climb and scoring, nice being able to hit 50HP reward node. Placed (barely) in t50.

In a system where everyone, new and vets, competes for the same tiered prizes these SHOULD NOT happen. That is punching FAR, FAR above their weight and indicates something wrong such as those people not being able to be seen by other competitors.

Unknown

I dunno, it's still 1 cover. 94 2* get t100, deep transitioners get t50, 166 get t25/2 covers, 270 get t1/t5. Seems much more healthy than previous 'don't bother if you're 94, 166 if you want one cover, if you can aim higher you don't need those covers anyway'. To be honest by the time I got to the point where I had deep enough roster to start leveling up higher majority of PvPs don't offer me anything of value (I'm nearly sure I could fully cover second Gamora if I wanted, she just can't leave me alone).

Unknown

Nivrax wrote:

I dunno, it's still 1 cover. 94 2* get t100, deep transitioners get t50, 166 get t25/2 covers, 270 get t1/t5. Seems much more healthy than previous 'don't bother if you're 94, 166 if you want one cover, if you can aim higher you don't need those covers anyway'. To be honest by the time I got to the point where I had deep enough roster to start leveling up higher majority of PvPs don't offer me anything of value (I'm nearly sure I could fully cover second Gamora if I wanted, she just can't leave me alone).

This is a huge problem that is created by the existance of season rewards. No way in hell will a top 100 alliance tolerate a slip of even a single PvP because that 4* cover a month is super valuable. They are too hard to get elsewhere, so I'd go so far as to say even a good portion of the top 25 is occupied by people who could care less about the actual placement rewards and only care about hitting 1000 and tapping out for season points.

They could fix this by running "off season" events during the season. PvPs with cover rewards similar to those going on in the season, so veterans could give them a pass mostly. Maybe even take out the 1000 point progression 4* and put in another event token there so most veterans would steer clear.