Roster level question

KGB

@Bowgentle said:
So softcappers can use the whole roster below 500, after that it's meta teams.
Which is the exact experience you have with dual 5* MMR at level 500+
Remind me again why you softcap 🤣

Things were fine softcapping until 5* boosts came along.

Now I'm waiting on the new MMR they are working on. Depending on when it rolls out and exactly how it works will make the final decision for me to jump to 5* land because my top 4s are almost maxed out (I have a handful over 360 now).

@Punisher5784 - My PvP scores for an event and season virtually mimic yours.

KGB

entrailbucket

It sounds like matchmaking is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. What would they change? What could they change?

KGB

I mentioned it before but they could pro-rate the 5* boost instead of giving a flat 100 levels. So if you had a champed 5* you'd get 100 level boost. But if you had only half leveled one (so L350) then you'd only get a 50 level boost etc.

The problem now is that PvP is only 5* character play. I still see lots of 3* rosters (where maybe only 2/3 of the 3* are champed) when I check the rosters of my opponents but they only are using their 5* characters in PvP because of the 100 level boost and 5* match damage. It's skewed all PvP so that the only thing you can use are 5* besides the few meta 4* that work with 5* like Polaris.

KGB

entrailbucket

I think they want players to use those boosted 5*, though. Remember, they make their money on roster slots. The 5* release pace has been really high for a long time, and they've actually increased those rewards.

They need to make sure newer players buy a slot for every new 5*, and a really good way to do that is to make single-covered 5* better than every other character.

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:
I think they want players to use those boosted 5*, though. Remember, they make their money on roster slots. The 5* release pace has been really high for a long time, and they've actually increased those rewards.

They need to make sure newer players buy a slot for every new 5*, and a really good way to do that is to make single-covered 5* better than every other character.

Yeah, and giving away 5* covers in boss events also sells roster slots.
For us, it's "generosity", but I'm pretty sure that's only a side effect.

Scofie

*** MOD mode off***

I think it's a win-win for sure. But I remember the days (not too long ago, just pre-9th anniversary) when I had a 1/1/2 SC. He was practically useless compared to the rest of my roster and I just didn't get to use him. Now he's champed I find him fun to play with. The feeder updates gave me the opportunity to champ quite a few of my 5*s. Not all of them have been used a lot but I get to try them out and that makes it quite fun for me rather than just having another 5-cover roster spot. I expect those extra couple of covers will make quite a lot of difference to the enjoyment levels of "newer" players who can't see how to progress their game or the depth of their roster.

entrailbucket

@Scofie said:
*** MOD mode off***

I think it's a win-win for sure. But I remember the days (not too long ago, just pre-9th anniversary) when I had a 1/1/2 SC. He was practically useless compared to the rest of my roster and I just didn't get to use him. Now he's champed I find him fun to play with. The feeder updates gave me the opportunity to champ quite a few of my 5*s. Not all of them have been used a lot but I get to try them out and that makes it quite fun for me rather than just having another 5-cover roster spot. I expect those extra couple of covers will make quite a lot of difference to the enjoyment levels of "newer" players who can't see how to progress their game or the depth of their roster.

Oh absolutely! Handing relatively new players an extremely powerful character for a week is both very fun for those players and also a fantastic sales strategy. ("Wouldn't you like to have a character like this every week?") The two aren't exclusive at all -- players are more likely to spend money on a game that's fun.

I think they're very unlikely to change a mechanic that benefits actual new players, to benefit veterans who've manipulated their rosters to look like new players (rosters that are significantly more powerful than they "look").

fractalvisions

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:
This talk of diversity is interesting though...when I see softcap rosters in PvP (and I do see them occasionally, and I go out of my way to hit them excessively when I do), I generally see them running the strongest characters in the game, just at lower levels. I do not see them running interesting or "diverse" teams. It's generally Polaris BRB or Shang-Chi Valkyrie or something similar. Lately, I see some of them running underleveled Chasm/Hulk. Those players don't seem to be too worried about only using the very best characters.

This is so true! In the thread I wrote chronicling my leap into the 5* tier, I speak to just that. I was clinging to this idea of “diversity” and wanting to hold on to these 4* characters, but all my teams were really relying on 5* (Thor, Okoye, Kitty, BRB, DD, and Thanos). Once I realized that I was like, “might as well level them!”

Like, if they were actually using most of the 4* characters -- if these guys were running Talos and Invisible Woman, and didn't want to lose the ability to do that, then that's one thing. But when you're just facerolling noobs with Polaris or Shang-Chi the whole time, that's not "diversity." You may as well just use Chasm/Hulk for every match. Why preserve the ability to use bad/fun characters when you have no intention of actually using the bad/fun characters?

Who are you asking this question to? Are any of the players who only faceroll noobs actually claiming that they softcap for diversity? Or are you just assuming that all softcappers are exactly the same?

I actually did use Invisible Woman in PvP recently. I can't say I'm in any rush to champ Talos though. I'll probably start champing 5s before I get to him.

Can I get to 1200 in PvP? No. Why do you ask? Do you consider 18CP to be a 'major league reward'?

entrailbucket

It was a rhetorical question.

And yes, I'd wager that most every player considers earning 18CP 3x a week to be a "major league" reward. Next to 5* covers/shards, CP is the best reward in the game. Earning 54CP per week is extremely significant.

KGB talked about only being able to use the "diverse" characters in very limited ways, and otherwise relying on "meta" teams for everything. Is your experience different?

fractalvisions

I'd say it varies, mostly due to the boost list. Sometimes it's possible to use a wide range of characters all the way up to 25 wins, but sometimes it does feel like I'm not going to get any wins unless I restrict myself to the meta.

entrailbucket

If you're using mostly "meta" characters anyway, then the only significant difference you'd encounter from leveling up some guys would be the ability to hit 1200 consistently. 5* players can occasionally use fun or diverse teams too, and many do.

It's just nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be, especially hearing about how things are different for the softcappers now. Before static-scaled PvE, and with cupcakes still present in PvP, softcap rosters trivially won PvE events (like, #1-5 were softcappers in every bracket) and could trivially reach top progression and even placement in PvP.

Neither of those things is close to true anymore, and it's just really hard to see an advantage to the strategy.

Daredevil217

I think change is hard. Especially because once you make the leap you cannot go back. The two advantages are all of your people are the same level which gives greater variety in team construction. I worry because Shang and Kitty, both of whom I do not use often in PVP are way higher then the rest of my roster. I worry that this puts me against teams/players with roster levels way higher than the characters I use. So everytime I level one of those two I worry I’m making the game harder. Softcappers don’t have to worry about that.

Second, they don’t have to worry about the Hulkgasm wall, which I would say is significant. Before Chasm, 5* MMR was my favorite maybe in the history of the game (including when I was in softcapped 4* land). Different meta every week with the boost list. The game really rewarded you for champing and leveling all your characters. It was awesome. I’m hoping we end up going back to this as they are keeping an eye on Chasm.

I will say, I wouldn’t make the leap now until the MMR changes are unveiled. If this way of playing has been working for you, no reason to pull the trigger. Who knows what the next generation of MMR might break or be made exploitable.

entrailbucket

I'm really not looking forward to whatever they plan to do to matchmaking. The current algorithm is really weird and complicated, because it's basically just hacks on top of hacks to solve all the exploits players developed over the years. At this point the entire thing is made of duct tape and chewing gum, but it all actually works consistently and it's unexploitable in any real way. (Yes, cupcakes exist, or whatever food you people call them now, but they're not 1* anymore and they're generally not affecting the larger player population).

If they plan to trash the whole thing and start over, or even just start undoing some of those fixes, we're going to see the exploits start ramping up again really quickly, or worse, things might stop working entirely.

HoundofShadow

Will you ask the dev to write an encylopedia on how the new mmr work and make those information public?

entrailbucket

I see your blatantly obvious trolling, but let's engage anyway.

At this point there's probably not a great reason to keep it secret anymore, although it's complicated enough that I'm not sure how they'd publish it in an easily-understandable manner. The main reason they had for keeping it secret was "players will exploit it for an advantage," and...well, we figured it out ourselves anyway and exploited it all to hell, so they may as well have just published it.

In general I'm in favor of openness when it comes to these things. Who prefers that this be kept secret? Would you choose to be kept in the dark about important mechanics? Would you prefer to operate at a massive disadvantage against organized teams probing for edge cases and exploits? We will do all of that, Day 1 of whatever they release.

HoundofShadow

You're one of the rare posters who advocate for the dev to post how every parts of MPQ works publicly.

You're right that players will exploit it once they figure it out themselves. However, what percentage of the playerbase does that? The majority of players don't min-max, play only a few pvp and pve matches a day or play only DDQ. The percentage of players affected by all these high level coordination/exploits are so small that it's not worth writing research paper on how pvp works.

If a player is serious about playing MPQ optimally/competitively, they would come to forum/reddit and find out the "secrets" themselves anyway. Once they go to reddit, they will be advised to join different Line groups. If a player is only playing MPQ to kill time or to relax, they won't be bothered about it.

In May 2021, Demiurge heeded the advice of forum players and created 5 videos about key to success in MPQ and the highest views, after close to 2 years, is only 8.1k.

entrailbucket

You've posted a number of reasons why it's not necessary to publish this, and exactly zero reasons why they should keep it a secret.

Go troll someone else.

Daredevil217

@HoundofShadow said:
You're one of the rare posters who advocate for the dev to post how every parts of MPQ works publicly.

You're right that players will exploit it once they figure it out themselves. However, what percentage of the playerbase does that? The majority of players don't min-max, play only a few pvp and pve matches a day or play only DDQ. The percentage of players affected by all these high level coordination/exploits are so small that it's not worth writing research paper on how pvp works.

If a player is serious about playing MPQ optimally/competitively, they would come to forum/reddit and find out the "secrets" themselves anyway. Once they go to reddit, they will be advised to join different Line groups. If a player is only playing MPQ to kill time or to relax, they won't be bothered about it.

In May 2021, Demiurge heeded the advice of forum players and created 5 videos about key to success in MPQ and the highest views, after close to 2 years, is only 8.1k.

If it’s only a teeny tiny amount of players impacted by this, and the majority are only playing a few matches per day on the toilet, why change things at all? You could say the same thing about Chasm. He only affects the endgame players which are a small percentage. But it appears the developers care and are monitoring. The old team also stopped tapping which really only affected competitive top players. It appears both development teams have made QOL improvements that mostly only impact the endgame. So saying X really doesn’t matter because it affects a small population of players is just a fundamentally bad argument. I’m glad that they are trying to improve the experience of endgame players and newbs alike. Because if they do their job well, those new players will one day be endgame players, and really that should be a place to aspire to play in. Not a place you avoid vehemently because most the players there report an awful experience. And to be fair Hound, you’re not the only one who has made this argument. I’ve seen it in other threads/topics. But it’s very flawed.

HoundofShadow

I'm talking about pvp in particular. If you bring in different aspects of the games, it warrants different point of view. Please don't apply such arguments to all other different matters.

As for tapping, it affected a small amount of playerbase. However, the impact it has on the game (financially) is big. Your whales or dedicated players have been forced to play the same nodes hundreds of thousands of times for hours just to get T10 placements.

When it comes to pvps exploits, players who know about it are likely long-term players who frequents forums or social media. And those players who come to the forums are likely to be players who are interested in improving that gameplay. Players who don't care won't be bothered by all these coordination going on. It's also why forum players are unhappy or confused why 5* Dr Strange gets voted into anniversary fan favourite store. The majority don't care about min-max or what not. If they do, Line group would be reporting T500-T600 placements in pve first brackets.

Remember when Demiurge made changes to cascades a few years ago to new players? Quite a number of veteran players were unhappy that the dev spend time making such change for new players, instead of making changes that benefit them. What about shards? The reasons they gave for the changes didn't sit well with forum players, but they did it to make majority of the players happy.

Daredevil217

@HoundofShadow said:
I'm talking about pvp in particular. If you bring in different aspects of the games, it warrants different point of view. Please don't apply such arguments to all other different matters.

As for tapping, it affected a small amount of playerbase. However, the impact it has on the game (financially) is big. Your whales or dedicated players have been forced to play the same nodes hundreds of thousands of times for hours just to get T10 placements.

When it comes to pvps exploits, players who know about it are likely long-term players who frequents forums or social media. And those players who come to the forums are likely to be players who are interested in improving that gameplay. Players who don't care won't be bothered by all these coordination going on. It's also why forum players are unhappy or confused why 5* Dr Strange gets voted into anniversary fan favourite store. The majority don't care about min-max or what not. If they do, Line group would be reporting T500-T600 placements in pve first brackets.

Remember when Demiurge made changes to cascades a few years ago to new players? Quite a number of veteran players were unhappy that the dev spend time making such change for new players, instead of making changes that benefit them. What about shards? The reasons they gave for the changes didn't sit well with forum players, but they did it to make majority of the players happy.

I talk about different aspects of the game with regards to your argument because it has been proven that the developers have made changes that impact smaller groups of players. That was my point. And I LOVE the Dr. Strange argument because if you are using that logic than the majority of players are actually meta chasers. Most special stores throughout the history of the game have been meta characters like Okoye, Kitty, Bill, Shang-Chi. Exceptions to this rule have been OML, Strange, and I guess Deadpool- who is really good but not meta. But these three are EXCEPTIONS to the the meta rule. Just about every other character in these fan-voted stores have been meta. So I guess 70-80% of the playerbase are min-max players and 20-30% are casuals based on the characters what wind up in these stores. Is that true? Probably not. But it would be if we used your logic.

So I guess what we really learned here is that you can spin “data” however you want, but it doesn’t make the argument any stronger if the connections you make are weak.