Lethal Intent Versus Matchmaking Poll

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Finally got a chance to play this with the Quicksilver match

First, fought a few seed teams.

Next.... all the available opponents were Quicksilver flanked by two level 270 characters. Occasionally Hood or Loki at Level 166 would be out instead, but most of the teams were level 270.

I wanted to try out Quicksilver with Daredevil and Iron fist, because it's a good way (maybe the only way) to fuel Quicksilver's awful abilities. I was able to take down some of these level 270 teams with them. Quicksilver Versus Quicksilver is a rather awful match ... if there are 3 locked tiles, a blue match by either side is bad for you.

Quicksilver-Iron Fist-Daredevil can't be played correctly by the AI. What did I see? I am barely at 100 points, and I start getting attacked like crazy. Why? Because I'm not using a level 270 team. It's just a level 166 team. I've only got 100 points, so I'm not losing a lot, but i'm being attacked five times a minute.

Eventually, I gave up on playing a team that worked well with Quicksilver and fielded a Level 270 team. At that point, the attacks stopped.

Doing about 20 skips, every opponent team I saw had level 270 teams. If I used anything else, such as a level 166 team, I started getting attacked relentlessly again. It's like the game is openly and blatantly punishing me for using anything else in my roster except fully leveled 270 characters.

I can maybe see the game doing something like this at 800+ points ... but eliminating 95% of my roster in PvP is grotesquely bad programming.

I liked the recent character changes, because it opened up my roster. But this MMR change closes up my roster and locks it in a vault. It's awful.

Eh, that's nothing new with how people used to think Hulk was a good deterrent and if enough people thinks this way it works since you can't force people to change their minds. People probably still think Thor (4*) is a strong defensive character even though she's pretty much just a free kill now. Until skipping is removed from the game you can't fight stupidity and must use whatever team that is currently considered strong because too many people have no idea what is a good/bad matchup. In the Gamora event I still see a lot of X Forces even though doubling up on green/black is an incredibly bad idea in terms of team composition, but you can't make those guys use Nick Fury instead who has a much better complimentary color to Gamora, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got attacked quite a bit because I had Nick Fury and most people had idea how he worked even though he's probably the best 4* to use that event since his colors are completely complimentary to Gamora's.

notamutant

My experience with the changes to MMR lately have been the following: I no longer see level 94 teams past 100 points anymore. I basically am fighting teams that are the same level as me up until around 400 points, at which time I see only level 166 or 270 teams. However, as a result of recent nerfs and buffs, I feel like there really isn't much of a harder time beating these "stronger" teams than regular teams. Overall, climbing is harder for me than before, but I am less likely to get unbeatable teams like before when it was all level 270 XThor teams. I also have points worth more matches. It is much more health pack intensive however. So I don't know if I would really say it is better than before. I think it is much harder to get higher points due to taking more damage each match, both because of enemies having higher HP now and fighting higher level opponents the entire way up.

Unknown

Managed to hit 1000 under new regime. Took a 3h shield to recharge health packs at 750 and a couple marathon sessions of grind, but I made it. Overall I don't find the game more or less challenging, just longer, especially with the health change. You will take powers to the face, and you will eat health packs to make up for it. I did lose way more fights than I'm use to tho. Maybe not use to the higher health values yet.

Final 5 fights went straight for Hulk Bomb which works quite well with Gamora's cheap red and green 2 person stun.

The team I hated to see the most: Cage/Fury/290 Gamora.

Unknown

DrNitroman wrote:

PvP is now definitely more difficult but I wouldn't say it's worse. Beating all those 94 teams wasn't challenging (and pretty unfair)...

I keep seeing this word thrown around. Unfair. What is unfair about stronger teams beating weaker teams to advance? It is the cornerstone of almost any competitive endeavor. Are these events not open competitions, with no barriers to entry and no restrictions on prize eligibility? Why should anyone be granted artificial protection? The problem is that the system turns what should be a passing thing, strong teams beating weaker teams and moving on to fight each other for the top spots while the weaker teams settle into bands to contend for lesser prizes, into batting practice at the pinata factory. Weighted matchmaking is a band-aid on a festering wound that's never been properly treated. It is a bad compromise, it's Solomon cutting the baby in half because everyone thought it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.

Even if a total rework of the system is never going to happen, there have been so many better work-arounds suggested in threads just like this one, from separate events to more flavors of seed teams to adjustments in the scoring system. This business of putting people into weight classes based on some arcane calculation of their relative roster strength and segregating them for the early part of an open tournament, only to then strip away that protection past a certain arbitrary point value is silly on a variety of levels, and while MMR has always been a flawed concept this new execution is really the height of absurdity. Having a poll and asking if people like it better is really pretty pointless. The poll might as well be "Did you score better under this new system? <yes/no>" because that's how most people are going to vote. The system is bad. It's been bad for a really long time. Changing the specifics of how matches are weighted is shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's all still going down anyway. Fix the system. Address the real problems. Because this is just a slightly different flavor of the same old ****.

Der_Lex

My biggest issue with the 'new MPQ' is that it's a lot more time-consuming to do well in PvP. I don't mind difficulty per se, but I feel like I spent enough of my time on this game already.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

What is unfair about stronger teams beating weaker teams to advance? It is the cornerstone of almost any competitive endeavor. Are these events not open competitions, with no barriers to entry and no restrictions on prize eligibility?

For comparison, it's like a lightweight fighter entering a heavyweight MMA tournament. He's going to get destroyed. That's not really fair. But the "unfair" part is we have no lightweight division right now, so all the guppies go into the shark tank and get promptly devoured. And that sucks if you are a guppy.

If there were a 2*/3*/4* tournament structure with 2*/3*/4* prizes it would go a long way towards a better PvP system. Were that the case tho, you think you could enter the 4* tournament and expect to find 94s to beat up on? I think not. So yes, while the stratified PvP caste system is a band aid it was a needed one. Chucking the whole system (including seasons) and starting over would probably be better but until then I will happily contend for the heavyweight title with all the other sharks.

vinnygecko

After being undecided yesterday, I'm more in the "this is worse" camp after today. After my nine matches with seed teams (cause no one was playing yet) I had decent matches up to 400. A mix of fully leveled 3s and a 4, with other teams being underleveled 3s. Once I hit 400, it's all fully leveled teams, mainly consisting of Cage and T4or. Combine that with the health buffs and the matches are taking over 5 minutes. While I could beat those matches, I'm having to use health packs after every match, meaning I have to wait a few hours if I don't want to pay up.

Also, the increased amount of attacks is getting ridiculous. I play one match only to come out of it finding that I've lost 4 matches for 70 points.

While I initially thought I had a shot at top 25 this time, I'll be lucky to make top 100. At least I'm not too worried about missing the rewards for this one

Unknown

i will vote for 'worse' but its not really a match-making poll, its for the overall new package.
i had a max covered XF and a swag of max 3*s, and could push for 1k when i wanted - though since cooldowns of course its a life-planning event rather than a fun thing to do. (certainly less fun for family to be put on hold when its 'time' to play for 10 minutes).
Now that XF isnt fast and the matches are longer with health increases/MMR, i can still make 1k (probably with higher HP spend i dont have enough of a sample set), but doubt i will bother with the grind, so i join later and pop up a 3hr shield at about 800 and take T50.
Doesnt seem much point to getting more 4*s these days and i own the 3*s so am now playing more for the social side than any progression, and awaiting the rumoured new mode.

skippytx

I'm much happier with the changes to PVP. Now I feel like the only thing stopping me from being competitive is how much time and strategy I put into the game. I have a 57 man roster but everyone is level 94 or less and now instead of hitting a wall I get matched with teams around my own roster strength. I haven't hit a wall of 166/270 characters at all in the last few PVP's. I usually only go for 500 points or so though, I'm sure the wall will show up if I go for say 800 pts or whatever.

evil panda

Ok after finishing lethal intent I still feel it's worse, but some more slight tweaks can keep it manageable at the high end, but still fun for the newer players (assuming of course that this setup is good for them, since I can't tell for myself)

Since the top tier teams have lost their fastest heroes (XF/GT), and the health buff makes fights longer, shield hopping (and consequently climbing over 800) becomes super tough. Not impossible, but as I said, no margin of error for losing (which happens a lot because of the attrition your roster faces) or even for a slower match because of the volume of attacks.

I'm no expert on game balancing but it seems that a few variables could be tweaked - the amount of points lost by an attack (reduce by even more than the previous reduction), the quantity of these attacks, effectiveness or quantity of shielding, or some sort of character buff, or dumb down the MMR a bit, just off the top of my head.

Unknown

The saddest thing is that back when the matchmaking worked fine, all they had to do to reach "their stated goal" of protecting weak players from getting stomped at the end of an event, is to make some sort of automatic shielding. Something like, you can only be attacked and lose points 3 times per hour... done.

Instead we have gotten one mess after another for weeks now. I really honestly feel like someone has lost their freaking mind...

I have a 152 Capt America, 152 Magneto, 140 Xforce, and 136 Devil Dino.
Lev 94 2* Mags and Storm
Lev 90 Iron Man Mk40 and 3hor
with everyone else even lower than that, and 51 characters

I can usually use about 5 of them per event...

Almost every team I see has a Lev 166 or higher on it.

I actually LOST 5 or 6 matches in Lethal Intent so far... I never lose in PVPs. If the match is anything less than 75% likely win, I skip. Most of those losses were today, and can be blamed directly on the NEW higher health. I guess it's something I will get used to.

PS I have won events and been top 5, top 10 and top 25 before. Usually if I decide I want a prize, I can make it happen. I have barely cracked top 50 since KK came out and the devs started screwing with the game.

Unknown

New MMR has made it extremely rough on organically grown rosters. Having anything from 120-153 on your roster is just asking to get killed by 166s all the time. And if you have a 110 featured as your highest level character who gets buffed to 170 plus some 94? Total high end point chow. Much better off under the new system to hang with 94s until you are ready to level a good pairing of 3* to 166.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

What is unfair about stronger teams beating weaker teams to advance? It is the cornerstone of almost any competitive endeavor. Are these events not open competitions, with no barriers to entry and no restrictions on prize eligibility?

For comparison, it's like a lightweight fighter entering a heavyweight MMA tournament. He's going to get destroyed. That's not really fair. But the "unfair" part is we have no lightweight division right now, so all the guppies go into the shark tank and get promptly devoured. And that sucks if you are a guppy.

MMA is a bad analogy, because smaller fighters can, and have, defeated significantly larger ones. That doesn't really work in MPQ, because skill only plays so much of a factor. At a certain point match damage and relative hit point pools alone make victory essentially impossible. That aside, this isn't a lightweight entering a heavyweight event, because if it were a heavyweight event the lightweight would not be allowed to enter. That's how weight classes work. This is more like the early days of the UFC, where there were no weight classes and you took your chances. Anyone could enter and anyone could win.

You're right in the sense that if you really want "fair", then there should be divisions, as in events with restricted entry. But saying it's "unfair" for stronger teams to defeat weaker teams with little to no chance of victory in an open tournament is contrary to the nature of the event, and giving anyone artificial protection is a bad idea. All you're doing is mixing and matching who is and isn't fighting above their relative power level based on an arbitrary rating system which is far less "fair" than allowing people to fight it out and settle into appropriate bands within the event organically. That's what happens in a system that works properly, as opposed to this one which does not and has to be propped up by increasingly contrived mechanics.

Lerysh wrote:

If there were a 2*/3*/4* tournament structure with 2*/3*/4* prizes it would go a long way towards a better PvP system. Were that the case tho, you think you could enter the 4* tournament and expect to find 94s to beat up on? I think not.

I suspect you would see plenty of people with lower end rosters jumping into the big leagues because that's where the best prizes would be. And they would get beaten down by better teams because that's how open competition works. Or maybe they wouldn't, and only people with maxed rosters would enter and they'd have to bang it out against each other from the very start. That decision would, and should, be left up to the individual players. But evening the playing field via multiple events with varying restrictions is a much better solution to the perceived problem of "big fish eat little fish" than weighted matchmaking, particularly this new heavy handed attempt to improve it, as would be any number of other modifications to the game and the scoring system than what they chose to do.

Unknown

Those are all good points, and thank you for not just saying "they changed it and now it sucks bring back the old way". I have seen first hand evidence that the band of unprotected point providers has just shifted upwards. Now the artificial protection provided to 94 rosters has left anyone with a 120 on their roster out in the cold to be gobbled up for points. The more I think about it the more a weight class tournament system that had required and boosted 2*s for 2* prizes (and barred 3* and 4* characters from being used), required and boosted 3*s for 3* prizes and required and boosted 4*s for 4* prizes is probably the way to go.

simonsez

Lerysh wrote:

For comparison, it's like a lightweight fighter entering a heavyweight MMA tournament. He's going to get destroyed.

Couldn't help myself...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esYysktv1PQ

Unknown

I honestly cannot give good feedback about the matchmaking. So much has changed just prior to the event that it's difficult to get any sense of what effect the MMR change, if any, had alone in and of itself.

I have two high level 4*, 4hor, and max XF, and about 12 max 3*, and a max covered Gamora at level 105 unbuffed. I was able to finish Lethal Intent about top10 with a score in the mid 800's.

The only thing I can be relatively certain of in the last few weeks is that achieving the 1k prog PVP award became more difficult to the point where I can't economically go for it with any regularity. It takes several shield hops to achieve the award (as it typically has) and with recent changes in combination with the shield cool downs, it ends up requiring a player to coordinate their life around the game for 11-19 hours (or more than 24 hours depending on successful hops or not). With the nerf to AP boosts, XF and perhaps other changes, fights are becoming longer. The number of fights you can relatively safely achieve per hop on average is now 2. Before you could sometimes manage 3 (or more if you got lucky) and with Xor you could start from a higher base score to start your hops. The shield cool-downs, lower starting base, shorter hops, longer fights, in combination with the lack of decent point fights in the dryer slices (I fight in slice 1 and 3) at high point scores all increase the effort required. Switching to a more popular slice 5 is an option, but only if I'm willing to get up to play the game at 3am in the morning to finish the shield hopping. Lastly, at high scores, I'm often still hit by players several hundred points lower than me for losses of perhaps on average 35-37 points. The asymmetry is sad: high scorers have little availability of decent point nodes, while the mosquitoes below just eat you alive.

The gravity is stronger. Fine.

I'd be okay with all of the above if they would just make the shield cool down for 3 hour shields 3 hours long or get rid of shield cool downs altogether. There are many barriers to getting the 1k prog award, and there should be. But the shield cool down barrier in my opinion feels unnecessarily cumbersome artificial impedance, only forcing the player to waste time setting alarms and watching clocks in their real life outside the game. Along with PVE scaling, it's a candidate for the least fun thing about the game.

If I remember correctly, I had heard (accurately or inaccurately) that one of the reasons for the shield cool-downs was to act against players coordinating on LINE. I can say that the recent combination changes actually has me considering to start coordinating on LINE. In my experience, the incentive apparent as a result of the changes is the opposite of the stated goal (if that was truly a goal).

And, from what I'm seeing, everyone is still shielding, as they always were. Just that now the HP cost is higher, or their scores achieved are lower. I guess I just don't understand the merit of shield cool-downs.

KrisPWales

skippytx wrote:

I'm much happier with the changes to PVP. Now I feel like the only thing stopping me from being competitive is how much time and strategy I put into the game. I have a 57 man roster but everyone is level 94 or less and now instead of hitting a wall I get matched with teams around my own roster strength. I haven't hit a wall of 166/270 characters at all in the last few PVP's. I usually only go for 500 points or so though, I'm sure the wall will show up if I go for say 800 pts or whatever.

My experience was similar and I would agree.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

The more I think about it the more a weight class tournament system that had required and boosted 2*s for 2* prizes (and barred 3* and 4* characters from being used), required and boosted 3*s for 3* prizes and required and boosted 4*s for 4* prizes is probably the way to go.

Where is the progression then? If you need X to win X, how to you go X+1? 2*s fighting for 3*, 3* fighting for 4*s, and 4*s... fighting with 3* for other 4* having advantage I guess? That would seem better.


But, looking at what we have now, it's definitely improvement for 2* rosters, for transition rosters (120 here, doing great) and probably 166 rosters (hard to distinguish legitimate concern of facing only 270s to crying that they can't get their effortless 600 anymore by beating 94s). However once you get to 270s, it breaks simply because there is so little of them and they require so much work to be workable, while being half tier above 3*s, that you don't have healthy environment. If we had like 15 of them, easier to get and to level, I think it would work just great. However right now many people are stuck with, say, 2 usable 270s and that's as bad as leveling 2 chars to 166 while having only 94s as backup, you just get cornered into that duo and nothing else.

The more I think about it that more I believe it's getting time to properly implement 4* tier. Start releasing more of them to give options to build teams. Loosen up reward structure because with more of them coming, giving them out to only 0,2% contributors just don't cut it. Cut the required Iso, it's crazy how much they eat.

But yeah, the MM system... works for me as transitioner, but currently under it I would never level 4 above 166 range, not because I'm afraid of fair fights, but because it would destroy the diversity of 3*s I can have while making matches longer and simply more boring with how little 4* there are.

I still think all this system have to do to be fantastic is to look up what characters you use rather just have sitting. So you can climb with your 1s, 2s, 3s etc. until you get point where you can see only better teams than you and switch it up for final climb. Bam, everyone have same difficulty climbing as but 270s are only ones having option to grab the top spots.

smoq84

My 8 strongest characters are around level 140. I've been playing for 400 days now.

I am a little lost with all those recent changes so I am not sure what "before" refers to exactly.
For sure now PvP is a lot harder then about 2 weeks ago.
Just after the seed nodes I can see many maxed teams and have to skip a lot for easier fights.
Of course I can manage to progress, but fights are more difficult and longer. In my opinion when player is making progress in the game and develops his roster, the game should be easier. What is the purpose to level up the characters if game raises the difficulty of every fight? The beginning fights should be easier and the difficulty can raise according to the points you receive. Bringing the maxed teams just after the seeds is insane in my opinion.

I'm wondering if the source of the problem is not connected to the minus point for defeated players - if there were no loosing points, there would be no need in protecting weaker players from the stronger one.

alexnmbc

Top 9 characters range from 153 down to 102.

Three seed team matches, and then it's all 166's or 270's from there out. Just barely managed to scrape 300 points but took using all of my stockpiled boosts and a whole lot of luck.

In the Quicksilver event I've played my seed teams and then hit a wall. 67 points and can't go anywhere, yet. That may change though, in Lethal Intent in the last few hours I had a bunch of 94-130 show up which was great.

Before things changed, I was at the point of being able to get 400-650 pts per event.