I like the new bonus iso, but...

Unknown

While not skipping guarantees an extra 30iso for a win, a major problem still exists. It's not feasible to fight someone with less points then you because you will get attacked back. In doing so, you will likely lose more points then you gained. The very simple solution to this is just remove retaliations. Without retaliations, it doesn't matter if you attack someone lower than you for a measly 5-10 points, they aren't going to come back at you. Of course you are still open to being attacked by others in your mmr, but it's far less guaranteed.

So, why do devs want retaliations? They likely think that they influence shield purchases, which should drive hp sales. Because if you quickly attack and then shield, you won't suffer the point loss from retaliations.

I understand their point of view, but it's pretty lame from a player perspective.
I doubt this bonus iso will solve mmr issues without this being addressed.

Unknown

This has been brought up numerous, numerous times. And it's a legitimate concern that seems to have gone completely ignored. Removing retaliations is indeed the solution. Only putting people up for matches who are not worth less than 20/25 points is another solution. What's discouraging is that the players seem to be the only ones who see this.

Unknown

If they removed retaliation people would just be writing about how a killer team of 3X141 stomped on them repeatedly and they didn't even have a chance to attack back because there's no retaliation.

I think you shouldn't lose the victory bonus for skipping a retaliation, though.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

If they removed retaliation people would just be writing about how a killer team of 3X141 stomped on them repeatedly and they didn't even have a chance to attack back because there's no retaliation.

Only if it would still remove points from the attacked player. Also, currently, if player haven't retaliate, he can't be attacked again.

Unknown

When you skip multiple fights and go down to zero bonus and then minus 10, thats great but then when you fight one match you go back up to 30 bonus, that's stupid cause it still encourages skipping, they should make it that when you win a match after going down to minus 10 for skipping your bonus goes up by 10, so -10 > 0 > 10 > 20 > 30 This would discourage people from skipping so much imo.

Unknown

Sushi wrote:

When you skip multiple fights and go down to zero bonus and then minus 10, thats great but then when you fight one match you go back up to 30 bonus, that's stupid cause it still encourages skipping, they should make it that when you win a match after going down to minus 10 for skipping your bonus goes up by 10, so -10 > 0 > 10 > 20 > 30 This would discourage people from skipping so much imo.

Are you for real? The reset to 30 hardly encourages people to skip - it's well documented round here that the main reason that players seem to skip is because they can't get a worthwhile match for decent points. If matchmaking was better, people would be less inclined to skip.

Unknown

Good for you. To me it looks the same tinikitty skip tax combined with the same awful matchmaking that forces you to bleed.

It keeps amusing me how mere rewording made people switch sides while you get the very same effective effect as the original thing that caused outrage form everyone.

Unknown

The Ladder wrote:

Sushi wrote:

When you skip multiple fights and go down to zero bonus and then minus 10, thats great but then when you fight one match you go back up to 30 bonus, that's stupid cause it still encourages skipping, they should make it that when you win a match after going down to minus 10 for skipping your bonus goes up by 10, so -10 > 0 > 10 > 20 > 30 This would discourage people from skipping so much imo.

Are you for real? The reset to 30 hardly encourages people to skip - it's well documented round here that the main reason that players seem to skip is because they can't get a worthwhile match for decent points. If matchmaking was better, people would be less inclined to skip.

I know thats the main issue, no one wants to fight low level points to get hit back double fold, but if they implemented it to encourage fighting than skipping, might as well go all the way.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Good for you. To me it looks the same tinikitty skip tax combined with the same awful matchmaking that forces you to bleed.

It keeps amusing me how mere rewording made people switch sides while you get the very same effective effect as the original thing that caused outrage form everyone.

Definitely, you are so right pasa. They know people are still gonna have to skip for whatever reason they were skipping in the first place cause match making has NOT changed at all. They are still claiming some iso back from us when we skip and everybody is so happy with a 30 ISO bonus per win!!! It will cost me much more than that skipping around to find a decent match in the first place. And what the heck is so wrong with skipping anyway?

Unknown

Have anybody already mentioned how much 30/10 ISO is?

Unknown

Skipping a dumb retaliation is one thing but hitting the skip button ten or more times in a row sucks. I'd much rather be playing the game. I like the 30 ISO bonus, but in events where I really want to place and have to play smart, the tax will be murder.

Unknown

I agree 100%. Allowing retaliations is necessarily bad with the current PvP setup. There's no reason not to get rid of it in my mind.

A slightly more complicated way to address matchmaking might be to make the points you earn tied to your opponents perpetual mmr score. That way, the people you're matched up against will all give about 25 points, give or take a few. It's crazy that someone with a much higher level team could hit me for 40+ points just because they started an event later than me; That's not what the type of ranking system they use was designed for.
That doesn't address tanking, but...

Why not have tiered brackets with progressively better prizes. Each PvP event could have bronze brackets, silver brackets, and gold (or something like that). If the gold bracket offered better prizes, I doubt people would try to drop their rank. The fact that people in completely different brackets are competing for the same prizes is a little off in my mind to begin with. After my first PvP event, I had two 3* covers and zero 2*. In the next event, I intentionally lost fights with my 1* team so that I could get the 2* covers that I might actually be able to use. From the very beginning, that seemed counterintuitive to me.

*end rant*

MarvelMan

Conundrum Kid wrote:

I agree 100%. Allowing retaliations is necessarily bad with the current PvP setup. There's no reason not to get rid of it in my mind.

A slightly more complicated way to address matchmaking might be to make the points you earn tied to your opponents perpetual mmr score. That way, the people you're matched up against will all give about 25 points, give or take a few. It's crazy that someone with a much higher level team could hit me for 40+ points just because they started an event later than me; That's not what the type of ranking system they use was designed for.
That doesn't address tanking, but...

Why not have tiered brackets with progressively better prizes. Each PvP event could have bronze brackets, silver brackets, and gold (or something like that). If the gold bracket offered better prizes, I doubt people would try to drop their rank. The fact that people in completely different brackets are competing for the same prizes is a little off in my mind to begin with. After my first PvP event, I had two 3* covers and zero 2*. In the next event, I intentionally lost fights with my 1* team so that I could get the 2* covers that I might actually be able to use. From the very beginning, that seemed counterintuitive to me.

*end rant*

There are good points in here. They do need to work on the MMR but constantly getting people worth 25pts is not going to happen. You will, and should, see better point match ups the lower your point total for the event decreasing as you move into the higher point tiers (across all brackets, not just yours).

I also want to correct a piece of misinformation. A person with a better roster who starts later wouldnt be able to hit you for -40 because of when they started, it would be because they had tanked their MMR into your range, which is a problem with MMR in itself (similar to tanking in PVE affecting scaling).

Unknown

Like some others have said, I think the easiest solution to all of this is change the logic in their code that pulls opponents for you. If they were to change it so that you always get opponents that have tournament points greater than or equal to yours, then a lot of skipping would be avoided (this wouldn't address any issues that players at the top would face though). Just like everyone else has experienced, there's absolutely no point in fighting someone for 10-15 points when you get retaliated against and kicked in the crotch for -20+. I really don't think this change would affect the meta since most people tend to look for 20+ point matches anyways.

kidicarus

I feel the new bonus iso just encourages more tanking. I'm currently tanking in psylock with lvl 6 bullseye and magneto now and the lvl 15 psylocke. I know that by the time I stop tanking, I'll leave behind a trail of lvl 15 psylocks and mid 50s thorverine/obw all the way to 800ish without having to skip or getting attacked. Why bother being the best when you're better rewarded playing mediocre teams? Retaliations would work if the MMR wasn't so easily manipulated and if you were motivated to improve your MMR

I really feel they should scale the rewards for being in a high MMR range. If you're the best and playing against the best, you shouldn't be getting more than the 70/140 + bonus. Maybe 100/200 and if you're playing against scrubs then you should be earning maybe 50/100.

In the same way, in PVE maybe they could apply scaling rewards to scaling difficulties. Players should have greater rewards for being forced to take greater risks.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

There are good points in here. They do need to work on the MMR but constantly getting people worth 25pts is not going to happen. You will, and should, see better point match ups the lower your point total for the event decreasing as you move into the higher point tiers (across all brackets, not just yours).

I agree with this to an extent. You don't want the winner just to be the person who played the most matches. It's an issue with trying to rank people when the attacker has such a clear advantage. It just seems that the points awarded should be based more on how good the team/player is than when you joined the event.
However, I think just getting rid of retaliation would solve a lot of issues people have with needing to skip/cherrypick opponents.

Unknown

The MMR selection of opponents is irrelevent because if it always simply gave you the highest value opponent you can get, you'd also never be able to hide from anybody else when you're the highest value available opponent.

You get some bad matches but so do your opponents. If all you get is good matches, all your opponent get good matches too, which are likely very bad matches for you when you're on the receiving end.

I swear people think this is a single player game sometime and just want BaconMagic as a 1000 rating opponent to beat on repeatedly. It doesn't matter how good (or not) the matchup system is. A good matchup for your opponent is a bad matchup for you when you appear on the other end of another player's screen, and vice versa for bad matchups. In fact the system can try to only give you bad matchups but you'll eventually get some good ones, by the virtue of being on the opposite end of a bad matchup another player sees.

MarvelMan

Personally, I think that a modified Bell curve of opponents around your point total that shifts the peak from above to below as you progress make the most sense. Maybe that is the way they try to work it now, but I know that Im well south of the top when I start seeing the majority of opponents at significantly fewer points than me.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Personally, I think that a modified Bell curve of opponents around your point total that shifts the peak from above to below as you progress make the most sense. Maybe that is the way they try to work it now, but I know that Im well south of the top when I start seeing the majority of opponents at significantly fewer points than me.

The range of your opponents should reflect where you are overall in points. So unless you're sitting at around 250th in your sub bracket, you should expect to see most people below you when you're high in points.

I checked my rating and it's like 260 today but I'm still #16 on my bracket, which is roughly the top 3%. I know 260 sure doesn't sound like a lot, but it's apparently more than 97% of the guys in my bracket. I joined my bracket last night, and I've no reason to believe it is esepcially uncompetitive, so I'd expect most of my matchup to still worth relatively little. Yes, there are obviously guys out there with more than 260 points, but the goal of the MMR isn't to ensure you find the equivalent of BaconMagic with more points than you. And if it did that, your points will just immediately plummet whenever you reached the top of your MMR range because everyone will be seeing you at the same time and immediately bring you down.

Unknown

For a lot of us, it's not trying to find a seed team with more points, it's trying to find any team with more points. There is literally no rational reason to fight anyone with lower points than you, unless you're planning on shielding immediately, because you will lose points overall due to retaliation. And that "top 3%" is meaningless because matches are global, not confined to your bracket. I think mmr needs to start factoring in tournament points in addition to W/L record or they're going to make tanking even more important.

MarvelMan

@Phantron

Not disputing that at all. It make sense and is the way it should work. I just know that I was pre-top 50 and hadnt hit 200 points when I started seeing the distribution shift to low point matches.