Taking A Look At Matchmaking and Tier Progression

Ohboy

Drycha wrote:

I recently broke through into Gold Tier and wish I had paid more attention to colour mastery now. I'm getting absolutely pounded in every match I play.

There's a tangible difficulty curve I wasn't expecting and I'm afraid it correlates with decks that have spent a lot of cash.

It's not about having spent money. You've grown comfortable in silver level, and now you've moved up to new challenges.

Believe it or not, you're currently in a situation where the game is the most fun. Challenges await you in gold, and more in platinum.

What fun was staying in silver and beating every game? Living on the edge of losing... That's what makes games great.

Spammerman

I think that player should be rated on the strength of their deck first and foremost.

Say a system that gives strength points based on the number of mastery points it gives you when mastered, and then factor in PW level.

Say:
Ccommon= 10pts, Uncommon=20, Rare=40, Mythic=80. And then add 1/2 PW level. (And maybe Purchase-only Mythics=120)

So if you have a level 40 PW with 2C, 5U, 3R, it would result in 20+100+80+ (1/2 40)=Deck Strength 220
And to compare someone with a level PW and 3U, 5R, 2M would have 60+200+160+ (1/2 60= Deck Strength 450

Then the system can create matches that directly compare to the strength of the deck you have, plus or minus a variable. This would make low-tier camping useless. If you have a 450+ deck in Silver, you're only going to fight other 400+ decks.

If you combine this with greater rewards for higher tiers, then camping will basically vanish as it's no longer worth while.

Using a system that grants a strength level to each card would also allow them to make minor balances to cards by taking a card that's a bit too strong for it's rarity *cough*Lone Rider*cough*Drownyard*, and giving it a higher card strength. And then take a card that's too weak for it's rarity, and giving it a lower card strength.

Players HATE having a card they use get nerfed, even if they admit that it's massively OP. By using a card-strength based system for match-ups, they can soft-bump an OP card into a higher rarity by giving it a higher strength. (And I freely admit that Lone Rider should be a Rare (or higher), even though I use it in every White deck.) And on the flip side, an under-performing card can be soft-bumped to a lower strength tier.

Mainloop25

Ohboy wrote:

Drycha wrote:

I recently broke through into Gold Tier and wish I had paid more attention to colour mastery now. I'm getting absolutely pounded in every match I play.

There's a tangible difficulty curve I wasn't expecting and I'm afraid it correlates with decks that have spent a lot of cash.

It's not about having spent money. You've grown comfortable in silver level, and now you've moved up to new challenges.

Believe it or not, you're currently in a situation where the game is the most fun. Challenges await you in gold, and more in platinum.

What fun was staying in silver and beating every game? Living on the edge of losing... That's what makes games great.

Moving up to platinum absolutely made me a better player in the long run, because it was definitely a sink-or-swim situation from there on.

bk1234

Ohboy wrote:

Drycha wrote:

I recently broke through into Gold Tier and wish I had paid more attention to colour mastery now. I'm getting absolutely pounded in every match I play.

There's a tangible difficulty curve I wasn't expecting and I'm afraid it correlates with decks that have spent a lot of cash.

It's not about having spent money. You've grown comfortable in silver level, and now you've moved up to new challenges.

Believe it or not, you're currently in a situation where the game is the most fun. Challenges await you in gold, and more in platinum.

What fun was staying in silver and beating every game? Living on the edge of losing... That's what makes games great.

I agree with this completely. The first few events when you tier up are a challenge. Once you settle in it becomes much easier.

The top 2 tiers require you to play with more control cards than the bottom two-- and this is actuallyin line with paper magic-- when most people start out, they're all about stomp and as they get better and their collections grow they play more control.

Also I don't think that decks in Gold and Platinum are stacked with Pay to Play cards. With the exception of Olivia, I actually rarely come across them and let's face it -- Olivia is really easy to take out. She's definitely a card that you get more of an advantage playing than AI does.

buscemi

Ohboy wrote:

What fun was staying in silver and beating every game? Living on the edge of losing... That's what makes games great.

I feel much the same way about Platinum Tier recently.

Ohboy

buscemi wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

What fun was staying in silver and beating every game? Living on the edge of losing... That's what makes games great.

I feel much the same way about Platinum Tier recently.

Only permanent solution to this problem is real pvp.

But since we're probably never going to get that... We need a much better AI.

Better matchmaking solves the challenge-the-player portion of the equation, but we end up with good players possibly scoring worse than bad ones unless scores are also scaled... Which is going to be another can of worms.

mouser

bken1234 wrote:

Soooooo boring. I almost quit this game when I did my Platinum grind. I think card mastery is the worst feature they have ever introduced.

I think Card Mastery is a fine feature. The mistake was to link a player's competitive event tier directly to the player's Card Mastery.

Card Mastery should give other benefits, I liked the suggestion here of reduced odds to draw a copy of a mastered card from a pack. Competitive tiers should be based on some other system, and probably shouldn't even lock the player into the same tier. Give the players an opportunity to select the tier they want to play in, with appropriate limits on what PW's and cards can be used in each tier.

bk1234

mouser wrote:

bken1234 wrote:

Soooooo boring. I almost quit this game when I did my Platinum grind. I think card mastery is the worst feature they have ever introduced.

I think Card Mastery is a fine feature. The mistake was to link a player's competitive event tier directly to the player's Card Mastery.

Card Mastery should give other benefits, I liked the suggestion here of reduced odds to draw a copy of a mastered card from a pack. Competitive tiers should be based on some other system, and probably shouldn't even lock the player into the same tier. Give the players an opportunity to select the tier they want to play in, with appropriate limits on what PW's and cards can be used in each tier.

What if tier was tied to deck strength and rewards were tied to color mastery. It might be worth it to grind Odric 157 times.

bk1234

Here's something I'm thinking about right this minute. The only incentive I have to master cards is to avoid playing PN (right now -- really -- he needs to be adjusted).

What I'm saying is there is no reward for mastering cards -- just a fancy graphic.

Mastering cards is an arduous ordeal that only draws competitive players -- we don't get crystals or runes for the hours and hours we grind through Nissa's Heroic Encounter Level 2 with sub-par cards.

My solution would be to offer runes (and please read on after the table):

Silver 500 Runes per mastery level (total of 2500)
Gold 2000 Runes per mastery level (total of 10,000)
Platinum 5000 runes per mastery level (total of 25,000)

My reasoning is that better PW make it more likely that one will be successful in a higher tier -- and you need runes to level up PW. While many of you have skills that far exceed mine, I could never be successful with Platinum without 2 color PW which are EXPENSIVE to level up. I have had Nahiri unleveled since the day she came out.

The benefit to D3 is higher tiers and better PW make better cards a necessity --- players are more likely to buy exclusive cards if they have the PW and other cards to make them sing -- and if they need them. A lot of people bought Gisela because they missed out on Olivia and we all know Gisela is like Olivia's slightly less talented step-sister.

I bought Gisela specifically for Nahiri -- I have a plan for her -- of course I don't have the runes to level her up and Quick Battle is only slightly less boring than mastering cards. But I bought her because I have higher PW.

Just a thought.

paralistalon

Before we can give suggestions, I think we need to know how matchmaking works in the first place. If decks are pulled randomly from rosters of other players in the same Tier, why do people keep getting matched against the same tiny pool of players?

EDIT: By the way, I don't agree with any of these elaborate deck rating systems. Some mythics are amazing, and some are trash. Why give them the same power ranking? All that does is make people take out the sub-par mythics from their decks, resulting in a much smaller deck variety. No one would play Soul Swallower if it meant they would suddenly be paired exclusively against Seasons Past decks. The meta would also be pushed into a collection of decks built from the strongest uncommons and commons and maybe a small handful of rares. It would be JUST as unfair to new players.

I liked how the Sahelli Rai event was handled, personally. It made sense to advance to Platinum even if you lost more games because the prize range was extended.

losdamianos

Good Job D3
Your answer of pushing people to dull card mastery grind is to completely cut rewards in lower tiers rather than solving problem of tie-breaks in platinum which when solved would push people naturally to platinum.
I would strongly discourage any new player investing any time/money in this broken system. Please make Plat/Gold more appealing by increasing the number of players that can get top reward rather than cutting bottom tiers

Ohboy

losdamianos wrote:

Good Job D3
Your answer of pushing people to dull card mastery grind is to completely cut rewards in lower tiers rather than solving problem of tie-breaks in platinum which when solved would push people naturally to platinum.
I would strongly discourage any new player investing any time/money in this broken system. Please make Plat/Gold more appealing by increasing the number of players that can get top reward rather than cutting bottom tiers

Err have you seen the new objectives? I'm actually bracing for incoming complaints that players can't get perfect score easily now.

losdamianos

Ohboy wrote:

Err have you seen the new objectives? I'm actually bracing for incoming complaints that players can't get perfect score easily now.

new objectives have nothing to do with the fact that D3 has cut rewards by removing:
coalition rewards from 2 most popular events (Terrors in the Shadows, Nodes of Power)
cut rewards across the board, Bronze and Silver will not get fat pack or mythic for being in the top 5 and for gold and plat bracket the amount of gold has been cut.

To summarize days of fast and fun progression ended with an 1.9 update
Management is trying really hard to discourage players from playing this game and its on the right course

Ohboy

losdamianos wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

Err have you seen the new objectives? I'm actually bracing for incoming complaints that players can't get perfect score easily now.

new objectives have nothing to do with the fact that D3 has cut rewards by removing:
coalition rewards from 2 most popular events (Terrors in the Shadows, Nodes of Power)
cut rewards across the board, Bronze and Silver will not get fat pack or mythic for being in the top 5 and for gold and plat bracket the amount of gold has been cut.

To summarize days of fast and fun progression ended with an 1.9 update
Management is trying really hard to discourage players from playing this game and its on the right course

Solving tie breaks would not have pushed people to platinum. The incentive system was broken. This is a step in the right direction to fix it.

Similarly, coalitions rewards were far too generous, creating even more problems within the coalition tiers itself.

You speak of progression. I propose to you that it has been artificially stunted for many people because of the broken system we had before. The top player felt progression stopped because they got flooded with mythics, while others felt it impossible to break into the top ranks because of the severe mythic advantage. This change slows down the top players much more than it does the average player. It closes the gap. If you're feeling the hurt, it's because you belong in the former group.

losdamianos

Ohboy wrote:

Solving tie breaks would not have pushed people to platinum.

Yes it would, not everyone is glued to their smartphone 24/7 which is the only way of ensuring you will be one of top 5 who managed to finish their nodes on time with perfect score

Ohboy wrote:

This is a step in the right direction to fix it.

Not sure how can you define cutting rewards across the board for everyone a step in the right direction I am a little bit confused. Unless you mean spending more actual $$ for big boxes to compensate for amount of mythics and rares which you can no longer win without paying ?

Ohboy wrote:

Similarly, coalitions rewards were far too generous, creating even more problems within the coalition tiers itself.

If you referring to ironic yunns post he was only highliting the fact that EMN had ONLY 6 mythics

Ohboy wrote:

You speak of progression. I propose to you that it has been artificially stunted for many people because of the broken system we had before.

System is still broken but now to get to where you were before you need to spend a lot more dosh $$$ for this tiny chance of non dupe mythic in your Big Box

Ohboy

losdamianos wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

Solving tie breaks would not have pushed people to platinum.

Yes it would, not everyone is glued to their smartphone 24/7 which is the only way of ensuring you will be one of top 5 who managed to finish their nodes on time with perfect score

How does that work to push people to platinum? People are staying in lower tiers because it's easier for almost the same reward.

Ohboy wrote:

This is a step in the right direction to fix it.

Not sure how can you define cutting rewards across the board for everyone a step in the right direction I am a little bit confused. Unless you mean spending more actual $$ for big boxes to compensate for amount of mythics and rares which you can no longer win without paying ?

People were getting too much. I refer you to the complaint thread by someone who got all the mythics in EMN 2 weeks into release via rewards and complained there was no more progression. Rewards between tiers needed to have a steeper difference. Since you can either reduce reward on the lower end or increase on the higher tiers, and the higher tier players were already complaining about getting cards too easily... You should know the group of players to blame for this. People like to point out to me about yunnnn's attempt at irony, but miss the point completely. 6 mythics for the set was fine. It only looked too little because he was getting too many mythics. The rewards has broken the system. The answer is to fix the broken system, not release more mythics. Ogw had 7 mythics. No one was complaining about having a full set because the broken coalition rewards wasn't in play yet. People got the mythics at the acceptable pace. Coalition rewards were breaking the system.

Ohboy wrote:

Similarly, coalitions rewards were far too generous, creating even more problems within the coalition tiers itself.

If you referring to ironic yunns post he was only highliting the fact that EMN had ONLY 6 mythics

No. Here, I'm revisiting my theme of the artificial difficulty cliff for coalitions to compete against entrenched ones who pull further ahead every event. The swap exploit is also only possible because there were too many mythics to be had. Below a certain threshold, it just becomes easier to form a competing coalition to fight for the limited rewards. And that's what we should be aiming for if we want a healthy competition.

Ohboy wrote:

You speak of progression. I propose to you that it has been artificially stunted for many people because of the broken system we had before.

System is still broken but now to get to where you were before you need to spend a lot more dosh $$$ for this tiny chance of non dupe mythic in your Big Box

Thats the system by design. No one is supposed to have all the mythics for free, or guaranteed a few mythics a week. Like I said, the top players in the game have gotten a free ride for so long, you're confusing a return to normalcy as a travesty. We're still getting tons of rewards for just playing events and qb. And now, there's a serious impetus for players to aim for top 5 every event.

Rares are supposed to be rare, and mythics very rare. What we had was rares dropping like uncommons and mythics dropping like rares. Q

buscemi

So about a month and a half ago, this thread was started, to take a look at matchmaking and tier progression.

Sorry to say that I made something of a fool of myself, by suggesting without any evidence at all that this thread would just be a lot of hot air, and nothing would change as a result of it. I was rightly chastised for this incorrect assertion, which was deleted from the thread.

So! I can't wait to hear now what y'all in the dev team have been working on in regards to this for the last 6 weeks!! Lay it on me!

bk1234

I'm happy to say in the meantime I've seen some new opponents -- for instance -- I just played Mersicide in 2 of my 5 NOP matches. I've played ShiftGypsy at least 10 times in the last three events.

Decks noted. Thanks for making it easy, guys.

Gideon

I played Mersicide 5-10 times this event. The way I believe matchmaking should work is if there are let's say 7000 players in platinum I shouldn't play the same player twice in the same event. If the matchmaking gives me player A for my first battle player A should now be eliminated from my pool of players to play against for the event. Next match I get player T and after that then player T is eliminated from my pool of players for the event. None of us should ever see the same opponent twice in any single event.

Ohboy

Gideon wrote:

I played Mersicide 5-10 times this event. The way I believe matchmaking should work is if there are let's say 7000 players in platinum I shouldn't play the same player twice in the same event. If the matchmaking gives me player A for my first battle player A should now be eliminated from my pool of players to play against for the event. Next match I get player T and after that then player T is eliminated from my pool of players for the event. None of us should ever see the same opponent twice in any single event.

I agree with the concept, but I feel it should be by unique decks, not player.

So I can play you 10 times in a row, no problem. But I want to face 10 walkers.