Tanking is making a mockery of lightning rounds

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

bonerang wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Imo best way to fix mmr is to remove it. No other game I've played I can think of uses it.

Have you ever played a multiplayer game before?

Name one. Btw, when I refer to "mmr" I specifically mean mpqs implementation of it. Of course there's matchmaking in mp games.

Hearthstone. League of Legends. Also, EVERYTHING.

Unknown

Someone said tanking has diminishing returns and round about the 500 - 600 range it's pointless. If you're playing normally you don't get on other players' radars until that range anyway. So AsianInvasion and I are making out with the ISO up to that point and then we start getting attacked and it's game on. Meanwhile tankers are...I dunno what you guys are doing - waiting around for your health to come back? And then you aren't on the radars due to the low MMR so you can zoom to number 1, but you didn't make the ISO we did either. So then you have to buy it because you have all these covers and you need to level these characters. And then you have three 141's and you're still tanking because the game is broken dammit, and that's what you do, it's the principle of the matter. Meanwhile we're making top 5 in tourneys and don't mind it because X-Force Wolvie is weaksauce, who needs him anyway, we got ISO and HP and new covers, and more importantly our credit cards are left untouched.

WHO'S THE SMART ONES NOW, HUH?!

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

bonerang wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Imo best way to fix mmr is to remove it. No other game I've played I can think of uses it.

Have you ever played a multiplayer game before?

Name one. Btw, when I refer to "mmr" I specifically mean mpqs implementation of it. Of course there's matchmaking in mp games.

A lot of multiplayer games attempt to match you against people of your same skill level.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

bonerang wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Imo best way to fix mmr is to remove it. No other game I've played I can think of uses it.

Have you ever played a multiplayer game before?

Name one. Btw, when I refer to "mmr" I specifically mean mpqs implementation of it. Of course there's matchmaking in mp games.

A lot of multiplayer games attempt to match you against people of your same skill level.

only problem is, you are playing vs AI in this game and there is minimal “skill” required for this game.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

bonerang wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Imo best way to fix mmr is to remove it. No other game I've played I can think of uses it.

Have you ever played a multiplayer game before?

Name one. Btw, when I refer to "mmr" I specifically mean mpqs implementation of it. Of course there's matchmaking in mp games.

Wait... wut?

Also, what everyone else said. Matchmaking rating is just a reality of multiplayer systems. To be honest, multiplayer games that did not feature any kind of matchmaking or ladder based play were much, much worse than the current implementations.

Unknown

doneskis wrote:

only problem is, you are playing vs AI in this game and there is minimal “skill” required for this game.

The AI has been better than the best human in virtually any form of competitive gaming since about 10 years ago.

I think 10 years ago I read an article by an AI developer saying the hardest part about building an AI is to ensure you don't accidentally slap people too hard and hurt their feelings, and that you have to throw the game and let humans win without making it look too obvious. MPQ AI throws the game all the time too and judging by people's general view, it's doing a good job at not making it too obvious too.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

doneskis wrote:

only problem is, you are playing vs AI in this game and there is minimal “skill” required for this game.

The AI has been better than the best human in virtually any form of competitive gaming since about 10 years ago.

I think 10 years ago I read an article by an AI developer saying the hardest part about building an AI is to ensure you don't accidentally slap people too hard and hurt their feelings, and that you have to throw the game and let humans win without making it look too obvious. MPQ AI throws the game all the time too and judging by people's general view, it's doing a good job at not making it too obvious too.

well the player also gets to choose who to target first while the AI has no choice in this matter.

Unknown

AsianInvasion wrote:

I haven't tanked in three months. I think it's a waste of time and you miss out on so much iso

Err, how one loses ISO here?

If anything, you gain ISO if you keep jojoing in a tournament as you get the 70/140 on the way up while sinking comes for free.

Unknown

akboyce wrote:

The combination of seed teams and duration make the LRs feel almost DESIGNED for tanking. If you are ONLY farming the seed teams (which many people do) there is almost no reason not put a tank team in for the last fight.

The number of seed teams is related to the MMR so tanking offers you more of the easy and fast matches against them.

Unknown

AsianInvasion wrote:

Tanking rubs me the wrong way. I don't mind others utilizing it, especially if they're still building towards a strong roster. But for those people with maxed out three stars tanking their way into two star territory, I consider that to be a pretty cowardly tactic and only exacerbates the problems with matchmaking.

I'm perfectly content taking on all comers. What's the point of maxing out my characters if I'm just going to pick on mid-level teams below my weight class.

What is the point? Getting to top places in the bracket, obviously. And until the scoring brackets are not related to fighting brackets you hardly can blame tanking. I can only watch someone with lvl30 roster to fly into top positions, well over the 141 teams even. And no one strong appears to see him to fight.

When the fights will happen in a single arena and those who share a score table can fight each other the thing will sort itself out. And really the strong teams go up.

But it will not happen as it's not the intention here, *s are supposed to get *** covers to then buy a roster slot. Same thing prevents all the suggestions that would help *->** transition by having aimed tournaments with ** prizes. That apparently is believed to hurt the bottom line. Or maybe someone's ego.

Better evolved rosters are screwed over in most PVEs lastly, at least in PVP they can work around the screw a bit.

If we just restrict ourself to LRs: what takes longer, kill a 60 hulk with a 60-80 team or a 140 Hulk with whatever? If the format just forces such "equal" fights smaller things have a tremendous edge. Just like in the screwed PVE, for getting leveled you can fight a 160 daken/ares team for good instead of a 50ish one others deserve. Or Maggia or whatever.

Unknown

I don't think it's even possible for a high end 3* to tank your way to 2* because if that was possible then you'd never see the 2* on the top of brackets.

I suppose there might be an advantage if you have a fully covered level 90 3* fighting level 85 2*s, versus 141 vs 141. Still, by the time you get into the 141s there's so much cheese around that the level of your opponent hardly matters.

Unknown

ELO doesn't make any sense for two reasons:

1)Buffed heroes. In almost every tournament, some heroes are buffed. For two players of the same skill and the same levels sunk into heroes, the difference between having a buffed hero or not is just enormous. So if I have all my iso sunk into a hero that happens to be buffed, I'll do far better than average. This makes tournaments either too easy or too hard, depending on what happened before or after.

2) Having a high ELO is actually detrimental. In this game, you'd rather have the lowest MMR possible. You do not get less rewards for a lower ELO. imagine what would happen to chess if a tournament open to people with an ELO of 1500 or below paid the same as a tournament for grandmasters. Someone like Vishy Anand would be tempted to not win that many games, and if possible, lose against the worst possible players. If a loss against me counts the same, tournament wise, as a loss vs Magnus Carlsen, but losing vs me thrashes his ELO, while losing vs Carlsen makes it go down just a little, he'd be tempted to just throw away many games against me, especially in **** tournaments, so that he can play with people that are even worse than me in big money tournaments, avoiding the grandmasters altogether.

So yeah, if having a high MMR is always a bad thing, tanking is the only strategically sound way of playing. Lately I've had trouble even taking in tournaments, because I don't face any teams that I can beat with my second stringers, unless it's just at the beginning of a tournament.

Bah, this game is frustrating.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I don't think it's even possible for a high end 3* to tank your way to 2* because if that was possible then you'd never see the 2* on the top of brackets.

I suppose there might be an advantage if you have a fully covered level 90 3* fighting level 85 2*s, versus 141 vs 141. Still, by the time you get into the 141s there's so much cheese around that the level of your opponent hardly matters.

Well the 2 star team has a tough time since 3 star teams are tanking and beating them down in LR by getting matched up with them.

But you do see 2 star teams/some even with 2 1 star and a 2 star character in top 10 for the 2 day tourneys.

Also benefit of tanking is less chance of retaliation which is what keeps most people from scoring high in pvp

Unknown

doneskis wrote:

Well the 2 star team has a tough time since 3 star teams are tanking and beating them down in LR by getting matched up with them.

But you do see 2 star teams/some even with 2 1 star and a 2 star character in top 10 for the 2 day tourneys.

Also benefit of tanking is less chance of retaliation which is what keeps most people from scoring high in pvp

LR seems to be looser on the MMR matchups compared to the normal rounds. I can't remember the last time I saw a 3X85 team in a regular tournament without a restricted roster. I've seen OBW and even Modern Storm in my matchups, but I'm pretty certain they were picked for their synergy and not because that's the highest level character available to my opponent.

reckless442

wathombe wrote:

Asian:

I don't understand your ISO argument. Are you saying that someone who tanks a couple rounds of LR would otherwise be playing those particular rounds and raking in the ISO? I think that's very rarely the case. Usually, a player picks the 1-3 LR rounds that they will perform well in, and tanks the rest. Further, most people don't have the time to play 90 minutes out of every 120 for 48 straight hours, so why not grab the 50-pt rewards and tank the ones you're not playing?

Phantron:

I actually agree with you here. Frankly, I think the much larger factor in LR score disparity is the seed teams. Players who start playing quickly and immediately each round easily build a 250- to 300-point cushion in the first 30 minutes before they ever face an actual team.

You're overlooking something. People who start a LR right away may get more seed teams, but they tend to get lower point values because there are no opponents with high scores. The person beginning 30 minutes later can quickly make up points because they can get 30+ matches that just don't exist at the start of LRs. If you're lucky, at the beginning of a LR, there will be a 27-pt match to start, then a 25-pt match. After that, if you play fast, you're mostly playing opponents who are giving you under 25-pounts. That also means you are worth more in retaliation points to them than they are to you, so there is a risk to attacking them.

I've played multiple LRs since Tuesday. The two where I placed top-5 have been ones that I played from the very start. Mostly, I was fighting 15-20 pt fights once I hit 100. But I also placed just outside the top-25 in one that I started at the 45-minute mark and could have moved up even higher if I had not decided I would rather get 2 heroic pulls instead of 1 courageous (I actually need more of the heroic covers). The point values for the battles in that LR were much better than in the other LRs.

Shadow

ihearthawthats wrote:

Imo best way to fix mmr is to remove it. No other game I've played I can think of uses it.

There are games that use ELO though and it's essentially the same thing

PuceMoose

Agreed, more games should employ these guys as consultants!


I mentioned this elsewhere, but tanking with daredevil is a lot of fun - trying to use only sausage drop to take enemies out (with a low level bullseye to help reduce damage/provide purple/red with his critical making skill) makes for a fun fight. I think I've laughed more with my default character/18 Daredevil/13 Bullseye final-seed-fighting-tank-team than with any other battle setup. I hope to get the missing Daredevil cover to up the fun potential.

Unknown

Shadow wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Imo best way to fix mmr is to remove it. No other game I've played I can think of uses it.

There are games that use ELO though and it's essentially the same thing

In a setup where players are not directly connected but an AI plays the game on their behalf?

Unknown

whatever system is used, the hardcore players are going to try to find exploits. not cheats, but just loopholes in the system.

I really dont see anything wrong with that.

these events are challenges but they are not insurmountable. unfortunately if you are a hardcore player you are going to be more likely to win regardless of the loopholes that are present in the system.

Pentagoon

Tanking in LR's will **** you (in the literal sense of the word, look it up). I don't mind losing to equally powerful teams - that usually means I've made mistakes that I can learn from. I've found the MMR to be providing me with more and more challenging LR matches as I'm building up my 3* roster. As I lose matches, it's been lowering the difficulty appropriately, for me at least. I can place top 50 pretty reliably at this point, some top 10 - but definitely enough to get a ton of ISO without the wasted time / effort of tanking to little benefit.

--Pentagoon