Matchmaking and the new player levels - musing of a veteran player

Tremayne

Based upon the discussion here - https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/77425/player-level-and-card-experience-2-25-19#latest - I would like to create this thread in order to collect my thoughts on this subject.

It is very long, but no one is forcing you to read it.


Definitions
I will start with a few definitions in order make writing and reading easier.

Player J are the active player looking for a opponent.
Player T is the potential opposing player.

Tier - each player can be in either Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. Mastering card is the only way to collect points to go up in Tiers.
Planeswalker’s level is a value from 1 to 60 (PW level)

Player level - each player has a level based upon the experience the player have gathered by playing MTGPQ.
Initial Player level - D3 converted existing players to a player level based upon the Tier and cards mastered at the time of conversion.

Experience - seems to be a new kind of points that are awarded through among other things; card mastering. However, D3 maintains that the majority of gained experience will come from other sources, but these sources have not been explained at this time.

Current situation

Disclaimer the following is based on actual experience as a long-time player (you could call it veteran) and my poor memory so errors may creep in.

The current matchmaking system seems to be two fold (sometimes it seems there are more layers to it).

The primary criteria seems to be as follows: Player J is matched against Player T, if J and T are ind the same Tier.

The secondary criteria seems to be PW level, so the gap between J and T’s PW must be reasonable. My experience says that the PW level of T is typically 10 levels higher than J (never lower). Additionally, J’s level 60 PW has a strong tendency to meet a PW with level 60 (as in 99,99999999% of the time)

As mentioned above there sometimes seems to be a tertiary criteria. In coalition events or PvP events, it sometimes seems that T’s PW always comes from the same node as J’s PW, but possibly this is just  observation bias.

This system has been used as long as I can remember (but I wasn’t playing the first year or so) and it has served MTGPQ well. Of course, it (like all systems) has some flaws.

One example is the repetitive nature of the opponent’s for a time (I hated going up against “Merseyside”, since he was very skilled at making decks that Greg could pilot efficiently). So something was tweaked by D3 after loud protests on the forum.

Another is that once you go up in tiers, the power creep gets more and more noticeable (I think, haven’t been below Platinum for years). I felt that in order to win I had to load my deck with mythics because common and uncommon couldn’t win (I have since learned to build better decks, but for a long while it felt necessary to load the big guns every time).

The main motivation to Tier-up (for me at least) has always and remains the chance of getting better prizes in events. I am not conscious of any other motivations, but I acknowledge the existence of such motivators.

D3 has with the introduction of the XP-system hinted at additional issues with the Tier system and therefore wants to change it. It seems that the pool of players are very limited (only 2% of all players are in Platinum with all colours). Also, it seems that it prevents D3 from implementing new contents with the Current system. There might be more, but these are the one I can remember just now.

The Xp-system (player level)

D3 introduced a new system for matchmaking, which seems to be based on the following setup.

The primary criteria seems to be player level, so J‘s level must match or be close to The level of T. The reasoning seems to be that since J and T are at equal player level they are equally good MTGPQ players. To me it seems highly unlikely to be the true, so I expect there are additional criteria’s involved.

That could be PW level or deck composition (a system that grade event decks after the number of Cards with different rarities) or something yet to be developed. But I think that it is highly likely that PW level will also feature in the matchmaking based upon player level.

 I might have forgotten something here, but currently I can’t remember any additional details released at this time.

Transition to the new system

As mentioned earlier the existing players were assigned a initial player level based upon their Tier. How has been closely guarded by D3.

The reactions to the new system have been heated to say the least and also polarised the community. Worst of all it seems a strong reason for players leaving the community. It is difficult to understand how the current system will ensure equal terms for new and existing players, but also between existing players who have mastered a different amount of cards.

The main argument for placating veteran players have been, don’t worry the new features will fix this. This has not gone down well, frankly, because how can D3 implement a solution that will level the playing field among all the different criteria’s?

Right now, those players, which have a collection of close to 100% cards which were mastered before the conversion, cannot see, how they are to catch up to the players who master cards after the conversion.

 I fully understand this, from this simple example. If in the future a tiny percentage of my experience points comes from card mastering, as D3 has explained.

Currently, a player can get between 2-200 XP per match (Playing a deck consisting of 1 card not mastered in TG or a deck of 10 cards not mastered in RT). Also the player will need to play between 5 and 50+ to master one card.

Since this is only going to be a tiny portion of my total XP-points, it seems to me that Players can expect to get at least 500 xp from other sources, possibly several thousands of XP. How else can mastering be a tiny part of the total XP?

Where these point comes from I no clue, but the effect is that active players can expect to level up several times a week if the 6500 xp-points per level is the norm from level 40+. Furthermore new players will hurdle through the lower levels at a speed that are going to leave them short of breath.

What happens if this is wrong? Well the following are some of the arguments posted by proponents of the current state of affairs.

1. Pre-conversion players will never catch up to post-conversion players
2. Post-conversion players can look forward to not play against the current cache of top players
3. Pre-conversion players most likely will not compete for the top prizes at more
4. Post-conversion players will have a very small pool of opponents to play against, since the majority of players, will be capped or not play long enough to get to the higher levels.

I’ll stop now before this post is lost in cyberspace.

So my conclusion now is that the new matchmaking system have to be based upon a huge pool of xp delivered from new sources or else the xp-system will only have introduced new problems (actually reintroduced), but for a different group of players.

@brigby - did I get it right???

Laeuftbeidir

Just an addition to the last bit : new post conversion players will have to go through several blocks of current top players in the future (the ones that did master a lot and 20 levels above the ones that didn't, but are still locked below maximum)

Tremayne

@Laeuftbeidir - true. I wonder if that has any impact, but it is impossible to determine on the flimsy information given so far.

 I see I forgot a crucial issue, which I have added as number 4.

I have also added a little interim conclusion. Because let face it, there is really missing a lot of information from D3, before the smokes clear.