On Bracketing and SHIELD Training

daveomite

bonfire01 wrote:

Although i'm all for forum positivity I feel like people give IceX a free ride for his posts. The claim that there is a "slight" change to bracketing is either misinformed or intentionally misleading because there is nothing slight about it at all....

That aside, months ago I said D3 were starting to devalue progression in their game and it's just kept rolling from there. Scaling made having high level rosters a punishment and now they've gone for an even more bizarre "time since joining" based punishment for PvP.

I genuinely don't see a reason to make people constantly fight against equally or more powerful rosters in PvP beyond money grubbing by D3. It feels like they simply want to sell more health packs and more shields because, especially after the spiderman nerf goes in and even more so when they almost inevitably nerf OBW (just waiting til the first post by a dev about her being used too much so they're looking into it) people cannot maintain the health of their heroes with a prolonged PvP push. So the hope from the devs is you'll chose health packs over prologue healing because your matches already take much longer AND spidey heals much less so prologue healing becomes less attractive.

Add to that the fact you need much higher scores to place in PvP so you need to win more games and can't afford to take painful retals, so they hope you'll shield hop thereby spending more HP.

In most games you progress and actually GAIN something from your progression. In MPQ that was higher PvE scores and easier PvP placing. They then went for the top end points based bracketing overwriting MMR towards the end of events but that at least meant you had an easier time getting the first part of your score before having to work harder on the points that got you your 1100pt cover or top placement. Now you get hard fights from your first point (unless you're beating on seed teams) and ridiculously stacked brackets regardless of your ability to compete (time played doesn't equal equivalent rosters). The points based MMR overwrite at the end of the events doesn't even cause better rosters to rise to the top because you don't get to be in the brackets with the bad rosters who win their bracket with 700-800 points instead you get 1k+ top 20s.

It's a truly bizarre set up and I can only assume D3 feel like they get more money from their newest players and despite IceX's attempts to justify all these recent changes as some kind of "fairness" or "challenge" it all comes across as cynical cash grabbing to me.

I guess we need to hope newer players wander onto the forums, see what veteran players are saying about the pointlessness of advancement and stop spending on the game to try and kickstart their rosters. Then maybe D3 will bother to sort this out since the overwhelmingly negative responses on the forum seem to matter not a jot.

love it, and agreed. Well said bon bon.

scottee

I'm not sure why people always think that something that negatively affects them must have been because someone evil is out to screw with them.

Ice said they tried to make the weighting slight. People experienced it as severe.

It's completely possible they put something in like a 3% weight in power comparison, and it snowballed to be super extreme.

People need to stop crying bloody murder everytime the mailman drops a letter on their porch.

Spoit

scottee wrote:

I'm not sure why people always think that something that negatively affects them must have been because someone evil is out to screw with them.

Ice said they tried to make the weighting slight. People experienced it as severe.

It's completely possible they put something in like a 3% weight in power comparison, and it snowballed to be super extreme.

People need to stop crying bloody murder everytime the mailman drops a letter on their porch.

Because they have shown a systemic ability to not match up what happens on their tests with actual performance 'in the wild'?

Because it was yet another stealth change that it took them a month to acknowledge?

Nah couldn't be an actual reason, must be Because haters gonna hate

scottee

Spoit wrote:

Because it was yet another stealth change that it took them a month to acknowledge?

They make changes all the time, and no they shouldn't have to reveal everything they're doing. They constantly update the scaling and rubberbanding formulas, but it's necessary for them to say "we changed the algorithm" before every event. Not everything's meant to be known. Otherwise people would just exploit it faster. Because the community eventually figures out the formula anyways (and pretty quickly).

Things not running as tested happens all the time, for much more important things than players in a game not being able to manipulate the MMR the same anymore, or brackets getting out of balance for a couple events. I have friends who do hardware and coding for top level tech companies. Even when they test and bug fix and test again, things still go wrong. They get called in the middle of the night, have to log in to try to fix it, and life moves on. Are customers upset? Yes. But it happens. No animals or children died in any of these instances.

mohio

scottee wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Because it was yet another stealth change that it took them a month to acknowledge?

They make changes all the time, and no they shouldn't have to reveal everything they're doing. They constantly update the scaling and rubberbanding formulas, but it's necessary for them to say "we changed the algorithm" before every event. Not everything's meant to be known. Otherwise people would just exploit it faster. Because the community eventually figures out the formula anyways (and pretty quickly).

Things not running as tested happens all the time, for much more important things than players in a game not being able to manipulate the MMR the same anymore, or brackets getting out of balance for a couple events. I have friends who do hardware and coding for top level tech companies. Even when they test and bug fix and test again, things still go wrong. They get called in the middle of the night, have to log in to try to fix it, and life moves on. Are customers upset? Yes. But it happens. No animals or children died in any of these instances.

I don't disagree that they shouldn't have to announce every single time they tweak scaling/MMR/rubberbanding/etc. However, I think this situation is/was completely different because there have/had been several threads and numerous people complaining at end about how they were being bracketed into a "bracket of doom" and since that had never really happened before, it seemed like something had changed, and not for the better. After the uproar on the forum and people "figuring out" that something must have changed, it STILL took them another week or more to finally confirm that something was different. To me that is too long for people to be left in limbo.

scottee

mohio wrote:

scottee wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Because it was yet another stealth change that it took them a month to acknowledge?

They make changes all the time, and no they shouldn't have to reveal everything they're doing. They constantly update the scaling and rubberbanding formulas, but it's necessary for them to say "we changed the algorithm" before every event. Not everything's meant to be known. Otherwise people would just exploit it faster. Because the community eventually figures out the formula anyways (and pretty quickly).

Things not running as tested happens all the time, for much more important things than players in a game not being able to manipulate the MMR the same anymore, or brackets getting out of balance for a couple events. I have friends who do hardware and coding for top level tech companies. Even when they test and bug fix and test again, things still go wrong. They get called in the middle of the night, have to log in to try to fix it, and life moves on. Are customers upset? Yes. But it happens. No animals or children died in any of these instances.

I don't disagree that they shouldn't have to announce every single time they tweak scaling/MMR/rubberbanding/etc. However, I think this situation is/was completely different because there have/had been several threads and numerous people complaining at end about how they were being bracketed into a "bracket of doom" and since that had never really happened before, it seemed like something had changed, and not for the better. After the uproar on the forum and people "figuring out" that something must have changed, it STILL took them another week or more to finally confirm that something was different. To me that is too long for people to be left in limbo.

That's my point though. People figured it out and, therefore, were not in limbo. The announcement that it happened didn't change anything. The forum was 100% certain a change had occurred, even before the announcement. People just want an official notice, that doesn't change anything about the game, so they can feel better about themselves. "Aha! I knew it!"

Unknown

scottee wrote:

I'm not sure why people always think that something that negatively affects them must have been because someone evil is out to screw with them.

Ice said they tried to make the weighting slight. People experienced it as severe.

It's completely possible they put something in like a 3% weight in power comparison, and it snowballed to be super extreme.

People need to stop crying bloody murder everytime the mailman drops a letter on their porch.

Firstly the fact IceX said the weighting is slight is irrelevant. Not only has he been factually wrong before (as confirmed with Demiurge_will after IceX claimed there wasn't scaling to global leaderboards) but he's not your friend posting inside information on the forum, he's posting what he's been told/allowed to as a D3 employee and it wouldn't be the first occasion where a wooly term like "slight" was used to downplay something unpopular while you hope ppl forget all about it.

IF and I mean IF it was a mistake why hasn't it been fixed? Acknowledged? Reversed while it was fixed? Anything? Your defence for the devs is they tried to do something but COMPLETELY screwed it up and are incompetent? If it's a simple weighting number change the number perhaps?

This is not some massively complicated AI network that could cascade with a change. It's simply sorting incredibly simple data. It's VERY hard to screw up. Assuming what we've been told is correct they are simply applying an integer number (days played) to someone then deciding where they are placed in a bracket depending on that number. If it was a slight weighting it would quite simply have a slight effect. There is no butterfly wing flapping into tornado chaos theory based spiralling out of control to justify it.

scottee

bonfire01 wrote:

scottee wrote:

I'm not sure why people always think that something that negatively affects them must have been because someone evil is out to screw with them.

Ice said they tried to make the weighting slight. People experienced it as severe.

It's completely possible they put something in like a 3% weight in power comparison, and it snowballed to be super extreme.

People need to stop crying bloody murder everytime the mailman drops a letter on their porch.

Firstly the fact IceX said the weighting is slight is irrelevant. Not only has he been factually wrong before (as confirmed with Demiurge_will after IceX claimed there wasn't scaling to global leaderboards) but he's not your friend posting inside information on the forum, he's posting what he's been told/allowed to as a D3 employee and it wouldn't be the first occasion where a wooly term like "slight" was used to downplay something unpopular while you hope ppl forget all about it.

IF and I mean IF it was a mistake why hasn't it been fixed? Acknowledged? Reversed while it was fixed? Anything? Your defence for the devs is they tried to do something but COMPLETELY screwed it up and are incompetent? If it's a simple weighting number change the number perhaps?

This is not some massively complicated AI network that could cascade with a change. It's simply sorting incredibly simple data. It's VERY hard to screw up. Assuming what we've been told is correct they are simply applying an integer number (days played) to someone then deciding where they are placed in a bracket depending on that number. If it was a slight weighting it would quite simply have a slight effect. There is no butterfly wing flapping into tornado chaos theory based spiralling out of control to justify it.

My last two brackets have been completely normal. I only had one that seemed out of whack. They probably did adjust it. (But I know, I know, I get it, people need a public acknowledgement of such a change to sleep better at night.)

I'm not saying they didn't screw up. I'm saying making assumptions about other people's intentions (like you just KNOW why they did something) is a pretty ignorant way to live life. They might be trying to downplay it. Or they might not.

Who knows, maybe some Devs really do have it out for forumites and are scheming more ways to make our lives miserable. I choose to believe otherwise.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

That's my point though. People figured it out and, therefore, were not in limbo. The announcement that it happened didn't change anything. The forum was 100% certain a change had occurred, even before the announcement. People just want an official notice, that doesn't change anything about the game, so they can feel better about themselves. "Aha! I knew it!"

I'm sorry sir, but you're full of small kittens. First, if you make a major change to your game, you should announce it, not expect people to have to "figure it out" for themselves, and wonder why they're having so much tougher time placing than they used to.

Second, people don't just want an announcement of what they changed. This is simply the most recent in a long list of changes that reduce the overall enjoyment of the game.

People want:

• Significant breaks between PvE's. Alternatively, or in addition, shorter PvE events that don't give out covers and are there just for iso building, so people don't have to grind every pve.
• Same for PvP - that is, don't count every PvP toward Season totals so people can take breaks (but do continue giving out covers).
• Restoration of rewards percentages. They've continually been constricting rewards, but giving out the same number of covers to an increasing number of people. They need to keep it consistent with the growth of the player base.
• Restoration of mid-tier rewards so that newer players have something to work for again, without this crazy sharding system.
• Balancing of the sharding system so that it spreads out veterans and transitioning veterans evenly (as well as all other level players) so that all brackets are fair. Restoring the rewards for mid-level players is key here.
• Ideally, separate pay-in elite tournaments giving out better rewards (like 4-stars instead of 3-stars for top 50, and 3 stars in the secondary tier), so that the truly hardcore can compete against each other without screwing over more casual players.
• Fixing the MMR so that you can actually use your 3-star rosters without quickly seeing a wall of 141's. It should match you based on ranking, not roster.

Additionally, people aren't happy with the changes in event tokens, reducing tokens that used to give guaranteed ***'s to only giving out an increased chance of ***'s. Same goes for 10-packs. Buying cover packs is expensive, and generally a waste of money unless you like playing slots. This isn't as much of a concern to me since I don't buy cover packs, but people do want fairer odds.

People do NOT just want some meaningless acknowledgement from the devs. They want the devs to actually listen, and make changes their players have been asking for quite some time now. There's a strong feeling of burnout throughout the forums, and I'd venture to say a significant number of established alliances, and the dev's responses so far have just been to ratchet up the pace. A number of vets/ transitioning vets (myself included), are seriously thinking about outright quitting, or in the very least taking a vacation from this game. You shouldn't need to take a vacation from a casual game.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

My last two brackets have been completely normal. I only had one that seemed out of whack. They probably did adjust it. (But I know, I know, I get it, people need a public acknowledgement of such a change to sleep better at night.)

I'm not saying they didn't screw up. I'm saying making assumptions about other people's intentions (like you just KNOW why they did something) is a pretty ignorant way to live life. They might be trying to downplay it. Or they might not.

Who knows, maybe some Devs really do have it out for forumites and are scheming more ways to make our lives miserable. I choose to believe otherwise.

My last 5 brackets I've entered (if you include Heavy Metal), have been brackets of death. If you got lucky and were one of the few to get a normal bracket, good for you. The rest of us have been pushed into brackets where it's increasingly difficult to place. I haven't entered the Daken PvP yet, but I'm sure that when I do and the top 10 settles, it'll prove to be a 6th bracket of death in a row. And I've been joining at random times. This is not coincidental.

Copps

While it is nice that your last two brackets have been normal and mine have also not been brackets of doom however top 10 is still looking to be around 1100 for me in most of these. I think they toned down the stacking a little but it is still quite prevalent. My bigger problem is the runaway mmr that has me fighting top flight teams from fight one meaning it will take a ridiculous amount of time to grind up to the numbers needed for any kind of placement.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

My last two brackets have been completely normal. I only had one that seemed out of whack. They probably did adjust it. (But I know, I know, I get it, people need a public acknowledgement of such a change to sleep better at night.)

I'm not saying they didn't screw up. I'm saying making assumptions about other people's intentions (like you just KNOW why they did something) is a pretty ignorant way to live life. They might be trying to downplay it. Or they might not.

Who knows, maybe some Devs really do have it out for forumites and are scheming more ways to make our lives miserable. I choose to believe otherwise.

I'm not saying they have it in for forumites, for a start the change won't have only effected forumites. I'm saying I get the impression they are making changes which are essentially unfair to some people to try and wring money out of other people by artificially inflating their achievements but knowing the change will also negatively effect them eventually as the next set of new players get a free ride.

Now you can say you understand a company trying to make money but as a customer you shouldn't accept shoddy treatment for you personally. I suppose if you're a purely free to play kind of person then you're not strictly a customer and don't actually have much of a right to complain. Personally i've spent more than enough money to have plenty of a right to complain and suspect it's the same for plenty of the people on the forum.

Incidentally i'm not saying I just know anything, i've been making a perfectly reasoned argument (well I think so anyway). If you think it's all in my head then please explain this to me 8)

IceX said the change to bracketing was made because new players would see the people that were leading their bracket with a seemingly unattainably huge score and it would put them off so they changed things round. Now, weighting implies a change in chance. So there would be a few less veteran (and by implication high scoring) players in one bracket and a few more in another. That doesn't actually achieve what they wanted though. The only way to have top scores seem more attainable is to remove ALL of the high scoring players from the brackets where newer players are and because they have to go somewhere dump them all together. This appears, from forum reports, to pretty much be what has happened.

So the only way you get that distribution is if the weighted chance of a veteran player going into a harder bracket is pretty much 100%. After all just one high scoring player slipping into the easy bracket and it's not getting won by someone with 700 points (which is what's been happening and seems to fit with the stated aim IceX gave). Once you weight something 100% then calling it "weighting" rather than simply sorting is VERY disingenuous.

Incidentally as far as I remember EVERY bracket i've been in since the change has had 1-1.1k+ for the entire top 10 (don't know how far down it went) which is, as you would put it, out of whack.

mohio

theHappyDance wrote:

You shouldn't need to take a vacation from a casual game.

Playing devil's advocate here (and hopefully nicer than the next person would have been about it). You can play the game casually any time you want to, you just won't be able to compete for the top rewards. It's totally up to each individual player whether they want to play competitively or casually. You're asking for too much if you want to be able to play casually AND progress your roster at a decent pace. Can't have your cake and eat it too (and numerous other cliches that apply here).

End devil's advocate - I actually liked your post a lot and agree with most all of it.

scottee

When I said simple announcement I was specifically referring to the weighted brackets.

However, I now realize what players really want.

Devs: We're planning to make this change.

Forum: What?! Don't do that!

Devs: Oh, ok, we won't do it.



I'm not saying the changes are warranted or good for the game. I'm saying we, as players, don't have the right to anything in a digital game. Let alone an announcement when we want it. Would it be nice for complete transparency in every mishap? Absolutely. It would help their player relations a lot. But that doesn't mean we have a right to it. There's no video gamer's constitution that protects our right to get timely announcements from Devs. There's been scores of video game communities that got little to none in terms of developer interaction and feedback. Yes, many of those died, some did not.

In short, would more listening to the players help their public perception. Yes. Do they owe it to us? No. Would listening make the game state better? Maybe, maybe not.

scottee

Copps wrote:

While it is nice that your last two brackets have been normal and mine have also not been brackets of doom however top 10 is still looking to be around 1100 for me in most of these. I think they toned down the stacking a little but it is still quite prevalent. My bigger problem is the runaway mmr that has me fighting top flight teams from fight one meaning it will take a ridiculous amount of time to grind up to the numbers needed for any kind of placement.

I had one bracket of death when the change first happened, then some not so bad, including Heavy Metal. But when I say not so bad, the scores are definitely higher than a month ago. What we don't know is whether this is solely from bracketing or if Season 1 has also been a big factor. (I think I remember Ice saying the scores are up all around because of the Season)

scottee

mohio wrote:

theHappyDance wrote:

You shouldn't need to take a vacation from a casual game.

Playing devil's advocate here (and hopefully nicer than the next person would have been about it). You can play the game casually any time you want to, you just won't be able to compete for the top rewards. It's totally up to each individual player whether they want to play competitively or casually. You're asking for too much if you want to be able to play casually AND progress your roster at a decent pace. Can't have your cake and eat it too (and numerous other cliches that apply here).

End devil's advocate - I actually liked your post a lot and agree with most all of it.

This is fully true. This is still a game. You can play it as much as little as you want. No one's holding a gun to your head or withholding food from you unless you play. (Unless maybe you're in one of the top alliances??)

Unknown

scottee wrote:

When I said simple announcement I was specifically referring to the weighted brackets.

However, I now realize what players really want.

Devs: We're planning to make this change.

Forum: What?! Don't do that!

Devs: Oh, ok, we won't do it.



I'm not saying the changes are warranted or good for the game. I'm saying we, as players, don't have the right to anything in a digital game. Let alone an announcement when we want it. Would it be nice for complete transparency in every mishap? Absolutely. It would help their player relations a lot. But that doesn't mean we have a right to it. There's no video gamer's constitution that protects our right to get timely announcements from Devs. There's been scores of video game communities that got little to none in terms of developer interaction and feedback. Yes, many of those died, some did not.

In short, would more listening to the players help their public perception. Yes. Do they owe it to us? No. Would listening make the game state better? Maybe, maybe not.

As soon as someone takes your money you do in fact have rights. They are quite specific and unless it was part of an overall level of service that was unreasonable then no you don't have a right to specific announcements but that's about the only correct thing in there.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

I'm not saying they have it in for forumites, for a start the change won't have only effected forumites. I'm saying I get the impression they are making changes which are essentially unfair to some people to try and wring money out of other people by artificially inflating their achievements but knowing the change will also negatively effect them eventually as the next set of new players get a free ride.

Now you can say you understand a company trying to make money but as a customer you shouldn't accept shoddy treatment for you personally. I suppose if you're a purely free to play kind of person then you're not strictly a customer and don't actually have much of a right to complain. Personally i've spent more than enough money to have plenty of a right to complain and suspect it's the same for plenty of the people on the forum.

.............

Incidentally as far as I remember EVERY bracket i've been in since the change has had 1-1.1k+ for the entire top 10 (don't know how far down it went) which is, as you would put it, out of whack.

To add to what you said, I actually have several spreadsheets I use, to make playing this game less of a job, and easier to play casually. I've been tracking my tournament rankings and top 10 scores since about start of april. There's a clear increase in max scores when they changes I think it was allowing shielded players to be hit, but there's a stark change when they switched to the sharding system. No more attainable top 10's. This isn't just going off a whim, or my recollection, this is going off my records going back the past month or so.

scottee

bonfire01 wrote:

scottee wrote:

My last two brackets have been completely normal. I only had one that seemed out of whack. They probably did adjust it. (But I know, I know, I get it, people need a public acknowledgement of such a change to sleep better at night.)

I'm not saying they didn't screw up. I'm saying making assumptions about other people's intentions (like you just KNOW why they did something) is a pretty ignorant way to live life. They might be trying to downplay it. Or they might not.

Who knows, maybe some Devs really do have it out for forumites and are scheming more ways to make our lives miserable. I choose to believe otherwise.

I'm not saying they have it in for forumites, for a start the change won't have only effected forumites. I'm saying I get the impression they are making changes which are essentially unfair to some people to try and wring money out of other people by artificially inflating their achievements but knowing the change will also negatively effect them eventually as the next set of new players get a free ride.

Now you can say you understand a company trying to make money but as a customer you shouldn't accept shoddy treatment for you personally. I suppose if you're a purely free to play kind of person then you're not strictly a customer and don't actually have much of a right to complain. Personally i've spent more than enough money to have plenty of a right to complain and suspect it's the same for plenty of the people on the forum.

Incidentally i'm not saying I just know anything, i've been making a perfectly reasoned argument (well I think so anyway). If you think it's all in my head then please explain this to me 8)

IceX said the change to bracketing was made because new players would see the people that were leading their bracket with a seemingly unattainably huge score and it would put them off so they changed things round. Now, weighting implies a change in chance. So there would be a few less veteran (and by implication high scoring) players in one bracket and a few more in another. That doesn't actually achieve what they wanted though. The only way to have top scores seem more attainable is to remove ALL of the high scoring players from the brackets where newer players are and because they have to go somewhere dump them all together. This appears, from forum reports, to pretty much be what has happened.

So the only way you get that distribution is if the weighted chance of a veteran player going into a harder bracket is pretty much 100%. After all just one high scoring player slipping into the easy bracket and it's not getting won by someone with 700 points (which is what's been happening and seems to fit with the stated aim IceX gave). Once you weight something 100% then calling it "weighting" rather than simply sorting is VERY disingenuous.

Incidentally as far as I remember EVERY bracket i've been in since the change has had 1-1.1k+ for the entire top 10 (don't know how far down it went) which is, as you would put it, out of whack.

You make good points. I think part of the dilemma is that most regular/veteran players want the game to move in directions that makes it better for them. Especially in the end game. This is advantageous to the devs because it gives them a committed community.

However, the devs also have the task of getting more new players hooked into the game to increase the player base. Vets might think this is good or bad, but it's a reality.

P.S. And maybe my perception's changed, but I see needing over 1000 to get top 10 as the new norm. I've attributed it to Season 1. The way that I had that was out of whack, I had to push higher than 1100 just to barely hold top 10.

scottee

bonfire01 wrote:

As soon as someone takes your money you do in fact have rights. They are quite specific and unless it was part of an overall level of service that was unreasonable then no you don't have a right to specific announcements but that's about the only correct thing in there.

This is only partially true in the world of digital content. You've paid for the right to use the content, but you do not own the content and the developers can change it however they want whenever they see fit. (See Team Fortress 2 and weapons/hats, which basically started the F2P revolution.)

I agree that better announcements would be helpful, and they may lose enough players that the community eventually collapses as a result of the current events, but naturally consequences are very different than consumer rights.