Discussion on PVP MMR

pepitedechocolat

I think that is very bad design, who wants to play a game that punishes you for trying to use better strategy ?

Also you are talking 4* land, by the time a player reach that tier you can expect they have at least some understanding of power levels and how the game works.

Finally, if you speak PVP, except maybe at 5*, there is NO giant power level gaps, and devs are doing monthly rebalances to make diminish power level discrepancies.

entrailbucket

The 4* tier has some pretty massive power level gaps. The dregs like Talos, Spider-Woman, Anti Venom, Puck, etc (and there are MANY more), are significantly worse than the top tier.

I don't think it's punishment to prevent stronger rosters from abusing weaker ones. In fact, the current situation seems like punishment for the players who accidentally levelled one of the weaker characters. Should they be screwed forever?

pepitedechocolat

@entrailbucket said:
The 4* tier has some pretty massive power level gaps. The dregs like Talos, Spider-Woman, Anti Venom, Puck, etc (and there are MANY more), are significantly worse than the top tier.

I don't think it's punishment to prevent stronger rosters from abusing weaker ones. In fact, the current situation seems like punishment for the players who accidentally levelled one of the weaker characters. Should they be screwed forever?

That is fallacy. mmr is already in place to limit most of the abuses. Besides if you cannot attack "weaker" roster with yours then what is the use of nurturing your roster? That happened in pve back in the day with scaling enemies and it was utterly bad, basically the stronger you roster the more you were struggling, so much fun.

Also if you have "non meta" char leveled, you are not "doomed forever". In 4star land you should be able to recover in a month or two provided you want to improve your roster, and even if you dont want most char can hold their own much better than what you seem to think if you work on good synergies. Then again the rework are regularly coming to improve the outliers.

Now if your point is people should be able play by farting on their phone and see just a little difference in result compared to people optimising every 10 iso and planning their roster weeks ahead (or just throwing $$$), we cannot find a common ground.

If one makes bad use of their ressources, one should not have great results.

pepitedechocolat

The current solution of matching roster mostly by "top X char levels" with some custom rules is overall OK. The main possible pain point for newbies is to invest iso heavily in uncovered 5* and skip all the rest, but with existing roster slot constraints I doubt anyone would willingly do that.

I'm not familiar enough with 5* pvp to get an accurate appraisal of how it pans out today, however a single champ will not screw your mmr that much. More importantly players champing 5* are not newbies. They have either months/years of experience, so yeah if they champ abigail first instead of chasm they are expected to know what they are getting into...

For lower tiers it is not that bad as recovery is "fast" and honestly you can work your way with spider woman and puck as your first 4* champs. Will it be harder ? yes but it is fixable in short time frame.

I reiterate, you want the game to allow to punch weaker roster to an extend, a game that allows to punch "up or equal only" would be very unfriendly to players. Also to be able to finely estimate the relative power of each champ and combination requires "god knowledge". That would be quite impossible and wasted ressources.

dianetics

A single 5* champ will screw your mmr.
I made the jump before I knew anything about PvP mmr or meta characters or teams.
My first champ was Heimdall and I could not compete in pvp. I would get punished often, and every event. I would get hit 2-3 times before I could get a win…if I could get a win.

The losses in pvp were offset by by the gains in PvE. But, it took me 6-8 months of farming to get the resources for a good pair. So I could actually PvP again.

This would not have been an issue if mmr was explained in game. I came to the forums because I had no clue what was happening and why I was getting wrecked every PvP.

DAZ0273

Talos is a bad reference in my opinion. With the availability of newer 4* being pretty high nobody is forced to transition with such a poor choice. The point is understood but it gets devalued by picking at the lowest hanging fruit. I think we could point at anyone from M'baku to Namora from recent releases and say that they are not ideal to transition with when you could have Polaris. Namora is even pretty OK but she is not Polaris.

Some 4* have added value due to 5* interactions. America Chavez and Deathlok but also Riri and some others. This makes them have disproportionate value without necessarily being as OP as Polaris. Polaris is OP. However boosted 5* influence things too a lot more than before when having a 5* cover was a meat shield (except OML yellow - praise be to geriatric Wolverine)

If you are going to play PvP and not get the hump you have to understand all parts of it, from MMR to the ELO scoring system - just understanding the last thing there can help you stop making potentially bad choices in who you attack and retaliate against. If you understand that you also know when you are approaching danger zones in terms of points milestones. The Devs created Win based PvP so they did not have to worry about people understanding PvP, so there is that I guess.

I dunno how you teach any of that in game.

dianetics

ELO is a bit complicated to explain in game.

An MMR blurb wouldn’t be though.
I’ll give an example of a thing that might work in a way.

When you get a 5* and are about to pump iso into, when you press the level up button a pop up comes.
The pop up says something along the lines of
This game uses mmr to match players at similar levels. Leveling high rank characters too soon could potentially negatively impact your PvP experience. Do you still want to spend iso to level this character.

Then have an option to disable to the pop for future reference.

It’s not perfect or a catch all but it might get users to go look elsewhere for information.

DAZ0273

Agreed.

They could also have it that levelling a single cover 5* to 270 actually requires a second cover of that 5*.

5* have always been weird.

Bowgentle

@dianetics said:
ELO is a bit complicated to explain in game.

An MMR blurb wouldn’t be though.
I’ll give an example of a thing that might work in a way.

When you get a 5* and are about to pump iso into, when you press the level up button a pop up comes.
The pop up says something along the lines of
This game uses mmr to match players at similar levels. Leveling high rank characters too soon could potentially negatively impact your PvP experience. Do you still want to spend iso to level this character.

Then have an option to disable to the pop for future reference.

It’s not perfect or a catch all but it might get users to go look elsewhere for information.

None of this pop-up would make sense to a new player.
Maybe "The character you are about to level up is not Chasm.
Please don't level this character."

Phumade

Alot of good MMR discussions. but a few points to keep in mind.

1. MMR is about connecting Unshielded teams that are similarly powered teams and at similar scores.

Unshielded
1. It seems simple to say that MMR can only match you with teams that are also unshielded. However, the implication is enormous. Placement PVP has always depended on players knowing when they can find high point value matches. Over a 2.5 day event, there will always be significant lulls and bursts of activity where high point players unshield to complete matches and then reshield to put and pull themselves out of the matchmaking pools. Putting aside the questions of cooperative/antagonistic play. Experienced placement players have long understood how to optimize their shielded vs unshielded times to maximize point opportunities. I would go farther and say that the best placement players (griller or sniper) understand/prioritize this concept more than worrying about actual team composition.

Similarly Powered Teams

As EB said.
1. Characters at the same tier and level are not necessarily equivalent. A level 20 Ares is way better than a level 20 bagman. and so on at the 3*, 4*, 5* tiers. As your roster grows, the variance between same tier, same level becomes exponentially bigger and their ability to synergize and leverage each others power grows especially when compared to other character combonations at same tier/level.
2. Once players understood these character/power differences, it trivially straightforward to keep running optimized teams.

--- This is the real mismatch that occurs between MMR as implemented by developers and MMR as used by players.

The algorithm might assume that a 500 ihulk/okoye should be equivalent to 500 Wanda/Colossus but in practice Wanda/Colossus wins that match 90% of the time.

Similar Scores
If people didn't know, actual match point values are calculated from a modified ELO rating system. This mechanic only links event scores to match value. There is NO CONNECTION TO ROSTER STREGTH OR LAST TEAM PRESENTED. A 3* roster at 1200 will still be worth 75 to a 5* roster at 750pts

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:
ELO is a bit complicated to explain in game.

An MMR blurb wouldn’t be though.
I’ll give an example of a thing that might work in a way.

When you get a 5* and are about to pump iso into, when you press the level up button a pop up comes.
The pop up says something along the lines of
This game uses mmr to match players at similar levels. Leveling high rank characters too soon could potentially negatively impact your PvP experience. Do you still want to spend iso to level this character.

Then have an option to disable to the pop for future reference.

It’s not perfect or a catch all but it might get users to go look elsewhere for information.

I agree with Bow here, I don't think they'd understand this. I'd much rather fix the underlying mechanic than try to explain it to new players.

The simple fact is this -- the matchmaking algorithm currently assumes that characters at each star tier are roughly equal. This was the case when that system was built. When the tiers were mostly balanced, it didn't matter who you transitioned with, because you might be at a slight disadvantage but you'd never be totally screwed.

The problem now is these giant gaps in power level between the best and worst characters. If you champion a bad character you're going to be matched with all the best characters, because the algorithm still assumes they're all the same.

So either: the gaps in power level are intentional, and the algorithm needs to know about that, or they're unintentional and they need to get fixed.

DAZ0273

The algorithm doesn't care who the characters are. In order for that to happen a further algorithm would need to check against a database of frequently used team compositions AND then check against the matched opponent and determine where a fair match up had been made based upon known likely outcomes from such matches. It then searches for teams and ranks them in value of likely success. That becomes your queue. You might still not get a good match because the algorithm can't control who is actually playing the game. So then you load on incentives/punishment for using certain characters hoping to try and Influence player behaviour/team compositions. Or you introduce character use limits based upon X use per X hours. It all starts to get increasingly complex to the point where it probably becomes a coding disaster.

The concept of equalising an entire tier sounds enticing until you try and do it over 130+ characters who were developed over the best part of a decade and try and make them all "equal". What a headache. You can't just give everyone Polaris toolkit and like it or not all powers were not made equal. Does everybody get a cheap stun? No thanks. Talos might actually be fixable as he has a decent stun but Black Knight, Puck, Flaptain, etc you can crank the numbers and they will still be ignored. So do you have tiers within tiers that ranks you for PVP play? I do not for one second believe the Devs wish to attempt to rank characters and looking at usage data is going to be all over the place thanks to all sorts of different things.

If you really want to upset things then you put a HP tax on the use of certain characters in PvP apart from if they are essential. Want to use Chasm, Jane Thor, Shang etc then you have to pay HP each time until such a time as the "meta" get reassessed. Perhaps those characters are always excluded from boost lists. The rich profit and the poor lose but isn't that life? Fine - make it a CP tax. Ouch.

Nah. It is all too much effort/aggro.

So basically the only thing left really is if a character is so dominant in terms of use either by affecting game play or team compositions then you have to put them down at some point.

I dunno what the answer is.

entrailbucket

Yeah, they don't need to be 100% equal. That's impossible, for one, and even if it was possible, doing it would make the game horrifically boring.

All they need to be is in the same league.

dianetics

@entrailbucket said:
So either: the gaps in power level are intentional, and the algorithm needs to know about that, or they're unintentional and they need to get fixed.

I'm 100% on the same page and I said the same thing regarding Okoye vs Wasp.

It would be an interesting thing to see them try to ilevel each tier, but I think it would be fruitless. So if Okoye is gold ilvl Wasp is white ilvl. I'm not a coder, but I'm not sure how you could function multiple tiers with a variety of power levels this way. It is a complex problem.

ie... a tier has a base power level but there is a modifier for the each hero's assumed power.
It becomes very convoluted, unless you shrink the power band of each tier. It sounds like a lot more work to try to normalize each tier. If you bring everyone closer together you could more easily modify, but you also reduce diversity.
It is almost an impossible task,, like how do you balance Beta Ray Bill v Rescue or Kitty v Knull?

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
The problem now is these giant gaps in power level between the best and worst characters. If you champion a bad character you're going to be matched with all the best characters, because the algorithm still assumes they're all the same.

This they can fix (accidentally leveling a bad character).

Just give players the ability to unlevel a character. So if you unknowingly champed 5* Wasp and found PvP impossible, you could unlevel her back to whatever level you wanted (getting the ISO refunded). Any champ levels are lost (since you got champ rewards).

This helps new players too who level up a 5* to say 300 because they lucked into a couple of covers. they could unlevel back to 255.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:
The problem now is these giant gaps in power level between the best and worst characters. If you champion a bad character you're going to be matched with all the best characters, because the algorithm still assumes they're all the same.

This they can fix (accidentally leveling a bad character).

Just give players the ability to unlevel a character. So if you unknowingly champed 5* Wasp and found PvP impossible, you could unlevel her back to whatever level you wanted (getting the ISO refunded). Any champ levels are lost (since you got champ rewards).

This helps new players too who level up a 5* to say 300 because they lucked into a couple of covers. they could unlevel back to 255.

KGB

They can't do this because it breaks their business model. If you could unlevel and relevel characters, it makes things like essentials meaningless.

It'd also make PvP matchmaking pretty hilarious if I could level and unlevel my roster however I wanted...I could unlevel everyone and climb off 1* until I ran out of points, then selectively level up folks until the next tier became visible.

pepitedechocolat

The roster strength evaluation is based on character rarity and levels. Going into character specific weighting (comparing if 500 level of chasm is different value than 500 levels of magik ) would be time consuming on devs part, and not yield a better game for players, and create even more whine in these forums than currently.

MMR system could be replaced with one that ties MMR to results rather than roster . (It could be much fun as high pointers would fight other high pointers, and double 550 roster could drop their MMR to abuse tiny roster that would be so cool)

But maybe besides MMR, The pvp part of MPQ could be improved to rely less on speed cleaning,shield hopping and concerted climb, and more on strategy and team composition and countering teams. That is a quite tough nut to crack though.

@dianetics sorry to hear about your bad experience with Heimdall, what was the rest of your roster like at the time ? especially what were your 4* max levels?

@eb from the first year of the game character have had different power level within a tier, it is not worse today, I'd argue it is the opposite. Rebalances and nerfs have been part of the game since the beginning.
Also having a couple of "weak" character is a much lesser issue than having a couple of "strong" one, for obvious reasons.

entrailbucket

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
So either: the gaps in power level are intentional, and the algorithm needs to know about that, or they're unintentional and they need to get fixed.

I'm 100% on the same page and I said the same thing regarding Okoye vs Wasp.

It would be an interesting thing to see them try to ilevel each tier, but I think it would be fruitless. So if Okoye is gold ilvl Wasp is white ilvl. I'm not a coder, but I'm not sure how you could function multiple tiers with a variety of power levels this way. It is a complex problem.

ie... a tier has a base power level but there is a modifier for the each hero's assumed power.
It becomes very convoluted, unless you shrink the power band of each tier. It sounds like a lot more work to try to normalize each tier. If you bring everyone closer together you could more easily modify, but you also reduce diversity.
It is almost an impossible task,, like how do you balance Beta Ray Bill v Rescue or Kitty v Knull?

Right...they should try to create some sort of obvious, easily-understandable indicator for each character to show how powerful they're meant to be...like some sort of star level? Maybe the best characters should get 5 stars and the worst should get 1 star!

(That bit of snark wasn't directed at you, as much as at the many, many people who've earnestly proposed the same sort of idea before -- you seem to understand what a silly concept it would be).

Controlling for power level within a tier is really hard/probably impossible. It also brings up other questions. Like, if Chasm is DESIGNED to be better than Rescue, why does PvP award the same number of Rescue shards as Chasm shards? Shouldn't we get twice as many Rescue shards, since she's purposely designed to be half as good?

All of this stuff is part of the (frankly monumental) pile of evidence indicating that character tiers are meant to be roughly balanced. When they produce a character who's too good or too bad, that is an accident, and not part of some grand scheme.

dianetics

@entrailbucket said:
(That bit of snark wasn't directed at you, as much as at the many, many people who've earnestly proposed the same sort of idea before -- you seem to understand what a silly concept it would be).
Controlling for power level within a tier is really hard/probably impossible. It also brings up other questions. Like, if Chasm is DESIGNED to be better than Rescue, why does PvP award the same number of Rescue shards as Chasm shards? Shouldn't we get twice as many Rescue shards, since she's purposely designed to be half as good?

Trust me I'm not offended in the least. I like involved discussion and enjoy a wide variety of positions.

I don't think they are designing characters to be better or worse in their tiers.
They try to make thematic characters and characters have been designed for years. So a character designed 8 years ago does not have the design bandwidth of a character designed today.
I would posit, that when they design a character a counter should also be in mind when they do it.

BCS did not do this for Chasm, SheThor, or RiRi. It is clear by how they entered the live game.

DAZ0273

They could make it a one time deal. I am not so keen on the idea myself> @entrailbucket said:

@dianetics said:

@entrailbucket said:
So either: the gaps in power level are intentional, and the algorithm needs to know about that, or they're unintentional and they need to get fixed.

I'm 100% on the same page and I said the same thing regarding Okoye vs Wasp.

It would be an interesting thing to see them try to ilevel each tier, but I think it would be fruitless. So if Okoye is gold ilvl Wasp is white ilvl. I'm not a coder, but I'm not sure how you could function multiple tiers with a variety of power levels this way. It is a complex problem.

ie... a tier has a base power level but there is a modifier for the each hero's assumed power.
It becomes very convoluted, unless you shrink the power band of each tier. It sounds like a lot more work to try to normalize each tier. If you bring everyone closer together you could more easily modify, but you also reduce diversity.
It is almost an impossible task,, like how do you balance Beta Ray Bill v Rescue or Kitty v Knull?

Right...they should try to create some sort of obvious, easily-understandable indicator for each character to show how powerful they're meant to be...like some sort of star level? Maybe the best characters should get 5 stars and the worst should get 1 star!

(That bit of snark wasn't directed at you, as much as at the many, many people who've earnestly proposed the same sort of idea before -- you seem to understand what a silly concept it would be).

Controlling for power level within a tier is really hard/probably impossible. It also brings up other questions. Like, if Chasm is DESIGNED to be better than Rescue, why does PvP award the same number of Rescue shards as Chasm shards? Shouldn't we get twice as many Rescue shards, since she's purposely designed to be half as good?

All of this stuff is part of the (frankly monumental) pile of evidence indicating that character tiers are meant to be roughly balanced. When they produce a character who's too good or too bad, that is an accident, and not part of some grand scheme.

The answer given in the Q&A (point no. 27) regarding Chasm is at odds with your last sentence though?