Forget the Skip tax, it's matchmaking that's an issue.

AtlasAxe

I understand why people don't like the skip tax. Here's the deal: it's not the problem.

The problem with matchmaking right now is that it will:
1. Give the same target two times in a row (minor)
2. Inevitably get you stuck in a loop in your climb at some point where the same 4-6 Qs repeat, over and over again (major, and probably the cause of #1).

I'm willing to pay the skip tax, provided D3 makes changes that ensure that 10-20 unique targets will be loaded in my Q. Preferably 20. If your MMR routine is so bad that it can't find that many targets at any level given the size of the PVP player base, either fix the MMR routine or start inserting seeds.

And when you fix this, give your player base at least the amount of ISO you gave out today. Many of us have easily spent that much in one event cycling through the same garbage over and over.

Vhailorx

Even the best possible MMR algorithm will fail if there aren't enough potential targets to find ideal matches for everyone.

The problem with MMR is the problem with the format in general. Shields are the only way to protect a score, but the invisible-while-shielded mechanic means that MMR is a wasteland at higher scores.

There are many possible format changes that could solve this particular problem and they all have their own positives and negatives. But I don't think the underlying problems that people have with PVP targets can ever be completely solved without making changes far beyond the matchmaking system.

AtlasAxe

I've seen some alternate proposals regarding shields that are interesting, and I'm open to those ideas.

However I find it hard to believe that with 2k + players per slice (min, I've never been in a slice with fewer than 4 full brackets), there aren't adequate targets. Even if all targets above a player are taken, there are almost always at least 10-20 people without shields somewhere within 500 points. The exception would be those at the very top. Thus the second part of my suggestion: insert seeds if no targets.

I would note that it's widely known that you can be at 700 points and have plenty of targets unshielding above you in the 900 point range, that will never show in your queue. That's pretty unacceptable.

Linkster79

I feel that the number of skips we can do before we have to pay put any ISO is right in the sweet spot and is way better than the old days where every skip cost ISO. If you seem to be stuck in a loop with only the same 5 or 6 names appearing try hitting a couple of them and it will bring new names around.

Magic

The easy way out of skip hell is to hit one of the targets. Yes - you will most likely leave a fat retal but maybe that player will not play for another hour or so? Or maybe he know the big point retal is somebody climbing so they will wait a bit longer before they use it? Not ideal and can backfire but it seems like the only way.

If they could fix the climb the game would be awesome. Still - the recent changes make me keep going and the anniversary around the corner holds a great promise (after seeing some recent moves).

acescracked

You want them to manufacture targets?

Forum was on fire requesting PvP time slices. Request granted: player base was fragmented into 5 different slices.

Forum was on fire requesting higher level teams shouldn't be able to hit lower level teams. Request granted: player base fragmented into similar leveled mmr groups. The higher you develop your roster the smaller the player base you'll get to queue. Footnote - Sweet spot seems to be 4* land. 3* you get hit a lot. 5* land limited targets.

So we got what we asked for.

broll

I didn't realize shielded players were invisible to match making. I think shielded players should still be attackable. That way people could still grow off them even while they are shielded, they just don't take the damage. This also would allow shielded players to grow if they were attacked and their defensive team wins.

simonsez

If you're at a low to middling score, and the game has a hard time finding you opponents you can beat at a score level similar to yours or higher, that's not a matchmaking problem, it's a problem with the whole damn design of PvP.

Quebbster

broll wrote:

I didn't realize shielded players were invisible to match making. I think shielded players should still be attackable. That way people could still grow off them even while they are shielded, they just don't take the damage. This also would allow shielded players to grow if they were attacked and their defensive team wins.

When Shields were first introduced shielded players were still visible to everyone. The result was that scores soared since hitting shielded players put more Points in the slice. The invisibility feature was introduced shortly thereafter.

mpqr7

I am doing my best to avoid double-tapping players or hitting friends, but it's very challenging and frustrating when I'm only given a few options that are either low scoring or high challenge.

Crowl

Quebbster wrote:

broll wrote:

I didn't realize shielded players were invisible to match making. I think shielded players should still be attackable. That way people could still grow off them even while they are shielded, they just don't take the damage. This also would allow shielded players to grow if they were attacked and their defensive team wins.

When Shields were first introduced shielded players were still visible to everyone. The result was that scores soared since hitting shielded players put more Points in the slice. The invisibility feature was introduced shortly thereafter.

A reasonable compromise to this might be to make people shielded people only invisible to attackers after they have been hit once by that person, a decent increase in the amount of targets without scores getting inflated too much.

AtlasAxe

Regarding all those saying 'hit the targets': I have my own process for choosing targets. Things like risk/reward figure highly, but also, whether the people are friends or I would double them also figure. Moreover, frequently I when I do hit them, they are still in q. You're expressing your view, my view is that 5 is a pretty low number. I know it can be worse for 5* players.

acescracked wrote:

You want them to manufacture targets?

As I said in my second post, most likely only front runners would run into this. Maybe they should just be the exception and when they are king of the hill, their privilege is that only a few can touch them. I'm not tied to any particular solution.

acescracked wrote:

Forum was on fire requesting PvP time slices. Request granted: player base was fragmented into 5 different slices.

I wasn't here for that. It's a good thing there are time slices, if for no other reason than people play globally. If it was for some other reason, the end result I would consider a good. And again, slices are still plenty large.

acescracked wrote:

Forum was on fire requesting higher level teams shouldn't be able to hit lower level teams. Request granted: player base fragmented into similar leveled mmr groups. The higher you develop your roster the smaller the player base you'll get to queue. Footnote - Sweet spot seems to be 4* land. 3* you get hit a lot. 5* land limited targets.

On your footnote, not sure this is completely true anymore. I'm a new 4* player, but I also now have 3 5* in the 360-375 range. I get hit a lot. My target lists tend to average about 5 people in the ~700-900 range. So I'm seeing both. I think when this change went in, the situation was as you state, but the player base has developed, and that has caused unforeseen results.

(I will note, I don't remember if I posted, but I would likely have been for this change. I'm not sure it was a good idea in the long term. I'm always open to be wrong).

On both of these, I'm not so sure about the idea of fragmenting the player base more based on SL. I have a bad feeling that that would make things worse, rather than better.

simonsez wrote:

If you're at a low to middling score, and the game has a hard time finding you opponents you can beat at a score level similar to yours or higher, that's not a matchmaking problem, it's a problem with the whole damn design of PvP.

Yes! This is I believe the actual root cause. Perhaps all of this fiddling around the edges that acescracked describes is a big contributor. If you ask me what PvP should look like, I don't know, but I do know of a significant number of alliance mates and others who are just about done. I'd love to hear others' ideas on what it would look like from a ground-up redesign.

Maybe all these little changes we keep "setting the forum on fire" with are not the best idea in longer-term practice.

I like the visible while shielded ideas, but is this another thing where we might be fiddling around the edges?

Ramble2

broll wrote:

I didn't realize shielded players were invisible to match making. I think shielded players should still be attackable. That way people could still grow off them even while they are shielded, they just don't take the damage. This also would allow shielded players to grow if they were attacked and their defensive team wins.

Not for nothing, but this would be disastrous to pvp.

How would you ever shield hop knowing that people are *always* going to be queuing you and attacking you? I know that the pool of targets would be much, much larger, but I'm confident you'd see hits pop up every couple of minutes while your shield is up.

Bowgentle

acescracked wrote:

You want them to manufacture targets?

Forum was on fire requesting PvP time slices. Request granted: player base was fragmented into 5 different slices.

Forum was on fire requesting higher level teams shouldn't be able to hit lower level teams. Request granted: player base fragmented into similar leveled mmr groups. The higher you develop your roster the smaller the player base you'll get to queue. Footnote - Sweet spot seems to be 4* land. 3* you get hit a lot. 5* land limited targets.

So we got what we asked for.

Nobody was asking for time slices for PVP, aces.

People were begging for time slices for PVE, where Europe couldn't avoid the 6am end times by shielding out early.

Devs rolled out time slices for PVP regardless.

SnowcaTT

"MMR is to tight" - one of my new crusades!

Again my suggestion to fix it: MMR very, very loose (perhaps none at all, though the devs seem to hate this idea).

You can only see any given player ONCE per event.

Hit them, you never see them again (prevents the hated multi-tap!)
Skip them, you never see them again (helps the hated skip-tax!)
Look for them, you only see them once ("helps" the "hated" cup-cake coordination.)

And while you're at it - at the VERY, VERY LEAST: remove the tax for skipping my team-mates.

TxMoose

Ramble2 wrote:

broll wrote:

I didn't realize shielded players were invisible to match making. I think shielded players should still be attackable. That way people could still grow off them even while they are shielded, they just don't take the damage. This also would allow shielded players to grow if they were attacked and their defensive team wins.

Not for nothing, but this would be disastrous to pvp.

How would you ever shield hop knowing that people are *always* going to be queuing you and attacking you? I know that the pool of targets would be much, much larger, but I'm confident you'd see hits pop up every couple of minutes while your shield is up.

this. that would be the end of people hitting above their roster weight and we'd just all get to finish based on the best team we could put out. once you climbed higher than the strength of your team, hits would just constantly come in. you could never break shield safely. also, the big guys once they climbed could still grill and add tons of points to the slice, which could be nice, but I've never been crazy about the 'see shielded players' ideas.

Quebbster

Bowgentle wrote:

acescracked wrote:

You want them to manufacture targets?

Forum was on fire requesting PvP time slices. Request granted: player base was fragmented into 5 different slices.

Forum was on fire requesting higher level teams shouldn't be able to hit lower level teams. Request granted: player base fragmented into similar leveled mmr groups. The higher you develop your roster the smaller the player base you'll get to queue. Footnote - Sweet spot seems to be 4* land. 3* you get hit a lot. 5* land limited targets.

So we got what we asked for.

Nobody was asking for time slices for PVP, aces.

People were begging for time slices for PVE, where Europe couldn't avoid the 6am end times by shielding out early.

Devs rolled out time slices for PVP regardless.

I love the PvP time slices. Before the slices I needed to climb after 10PM, put up the 8 hour shield and then hope for decent progression when the event ended at 6 AM. Now I can actually use the three-hour shield when appropriate...

Kolence

Quebbster wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

acescracked wrote:

You want them to manufacture targets?

Forum was on fire requesting PvP time slices. Request granted: player base was fragmented into 5 different slices.

Forum was on fire requesting higher level teams shouldn't be able to hit lower level teams. Request granted: player base fragmented into similar leveled mmr groups. The higher you develop your roster the smaller the player base you'll get to queue. Footnote - Sweet spot seems to be 4* land. 3* you get hit a lot. 5* land limited targets.

So we got what we asked for.

Nobody was asking for time slices for PVP, aces.

People were begging for time slices for PVE, where Europe couldn't avoid the 6am end times by shielding out early.

Devs rolled out time slices for PVP regardless.

I love the PvP time slices. Before the slices I needed to climb after 10PM, put up the 8 hour shield and then hope for decent progression when the event ended at 6 AM. Now I can actually use the three-hour shield when appropriate...

What if everyone w̶a̶s̶ ̶g̶i̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ...could buy shielded-to-the-end type of shield once per event? In addition to the current "cooldown" shields.

Quebbster

Kolence wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

acescracked wrote:

You want them to manufacture targets?

Forum was on fire requesting PvP time slices. Request granted: player base was fragmented into 5 different slices.

Forum was on fire requesting higher level teams shouldn't be able to hit lower level teams. Request granted: player base fragmented into similar leveled mmr groups. The higher you develop your roster the smaller the player base you'll get to queue. Footnote - Sweet spot seems to be 4* land. 3* you get hit a lot. 5* land limited targets.

So we got what we asked for.

Nobody was asking for time slices for PVP, aces.

People were begging for time slices for PVE, where Europe couldn't avoid the 6am end times by shielding out early.

Devs rolled out time slices for PVP regardless.

I love the PvP time slices. Before the slices I needed to climb after 10PM, put up the 8 hour shield and then hope for decent progression when the event ended at 6 AM. Now I can actually use the three-hour shield when appropriate...

What if everyone w̶a̶s̶ ̶g̶i̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ...could buy shielded-to-the-end type of shield once per event? In addition to the current "cooldown" shields.

Doesn't really matter. The closer to the end of the event you can play, the bigger your advantage.

deadtaco

Quebbster wrote:

Doesn't really matter. The closer to the end of the event you can play, the bigger your advantage.

That's what I thought. The luke cage pvp that just ended - 80 minutes to go and all I could find where 190+ level 3 opponents, which are out of my range. Nothing in my level at all. I kept skipping think I would find something - but no. In fact it just started to repeat some of the same teams over and over.

amusingfoo1

Atlas Axe wrote:

I understand why people don't like the skip tax. Here's the deal: it's not the problem.

The problem with matchmaking right now is that it will:
1. Give the same target two times in a row (minor)
2. Inevitably get you stuck in a loop in your climb at some point where the same 4-6 Qs repeat, over and over again (major, and probably the cause of #1).

I'm willing to pay the skip tax, provided D3 makes changes that ensure that 10-20 unique targets will be loaded in my Q. Preferably 20. If your MMR routine is so bad that it can't find that many targets at any level given the size of the PVP player base, either fix the MMR routine or start inserting seeds.

And when you fix this, give your player base at least the amount of ISO you gave out today. Many of us have easily spent that much in one event cycling through the same garbage over and over.

When you get new queues, you get, I believe, seven at a time. If you queue someone, skip on another node, then skip on that node, you will sometimes see the same one twice in a row, because you already had that person queued from the most recent batch. If you only cycle on one node, that won't happen (well, maybe if you do six fights in a row on that node, then skip. Not sure, in that case, though I suspect not, even then).

The system is designed to only give you targets within your MMR/point range (and the range goes higher (much higher, for 5* players) up than down). It will only give you those targets until it gets down to either five or six possibilities (the 3-4 that you're cycling through on that node, plus the two on your other nodes). Once there are fewer than that, it supplements with people of similar score, but any MMR. When that doesn't give enough options (generally only when you're at the top of the (unshielded portion of the) shard), it will give you anyone it can find. Which can include seeds (though I've only personally managed that once).

You can argue about how many queues should be grabbed at once (personally, I'm glad it isn't more), and about how many appropriate opponents it should be down to before it "supplements" (I wouldn't mind it being 1-2 higher), but I think it's hard to argue that the general approach is wrong-headed.

And for the people who complain about the points of a match being off, remember that the points are correct for when that batch of queues is grabbed (it would be nice if they would re-check the points when you bring that queue onto a node, though I don't know how much server load that additional traffic would generate). But even if they did re-check, it could still be wrong due to that person winning or losing (a) match(es) while you play them.