New Feature - Champions 2.0 (Live with R287)

TheXMan

Can people with 480s see dual 550s before they break MMR? I thought dual 550s often fought each other until a certain point level. If that is the case, I would not call them peers.

entrailbucket

@TheXMan said:
Can people with 480s see dual 550s before they break MMR? I thought dual 550s often fought each other until a certain point level. If that is the case, I would not call them peers.

I play in s2 at weird times, my experience is not typical or (probably) replicable.

Seriously, you guys are completely missing the point though. Yes, I can beat up players with 480 or 500-level rosters. That is because those players and I are all in the top fraction of a percentage of all rosters in the game. The game doesn't see a ton of difference between you and me because there isn't a ton of difference between you and me.

This started with concern about "new" or "weak" players potentially getting beaten up by me. Matchmaking exists to prevent that. It's the same reason you aren't allowed to beat up on these players, and you shouldn't be.

Players with lvl480 characters are neither new nor weak, despite what they appear to think. You don't get protection from me, and you shouldn't. I swear, only MPQ players do this kind of stuff. The gap between you and me is tiny compared to the gap between either of us and a new player.

revskip

@bbigler said:
3 Points:

1. Ascension helps new players in PVE! Battles are tough in PVE when you're new. Ascension also helps new players get more CP and LT rewards, so that they can get 5* champs sooner.
2. Ascension can certainly mess up your MMR, giving you really tough fights, so I think the devs should scale the MMR for 1/2/3 star ascended characters.
3. The devs should also explain somewhere in the game how PVP matchmaking works so that all players understand it.

On a side note, I'm so sick and tired of fighting Mthor in PVP! Her endless turns and cascades are really annoying, she costs me health packs and sometimes wipes my team. Yeah, yeah, I know she's been boosted this past week, but she's still really annoying! Pair her with Riri and your team gets stun locked for the whole match. I would rather fight the new Chasm or anyone else.

Get used to it. They neutered Chasm so she is now the most OP thing around. Of course folks are gonna use her. Until they neuter her next.

DrClever

@jsmjsmjsm00 said:
non-casual players can be expected to know that video games match you against similar players to yourself. This idea that we need some sort of detailed explanation on how PvP works is such a manufactured problem.

Bollocks is it. The game does not match you against similar players, it matches you against players whose top few highest level characters are around the same level as your top few.

It doesn't tell you this and it doesn't tell you that overpromoting the wrong characters can break PvP for years.

It's not a made up problem, it's a huge flaw that is slightly mitigated by the community.

entrailbucket

@DrClever said:

@jsmjsmjsm00 said:
non-casual players can be expected to know that video games match you against similar players to yourself. This idea that we need some sort of detailed explanation on how PvP works is such a manufactured problem.

Bollocks is it. The game does not match you against similar players, it matches you against players whose top few highest level characters are around the same level as your top few.

It doesn't tell you this and it doesn't tell you that overpromoting the wrong characters can break PvP for years.

It's not a made up problem, it's a huge flaw that is slightly mitigated by the community.

How is this a problem at all? If you promote characters of the next tier, you should expect to see opponents of the next tier. That's how every competitive game works.
This isn't "broken" unless you expect to be able to punch down 200 or 300 levels forever.

jsmjsmjsm00

That's literally similar players. You play a match with at most 3 of your own characters. They match you with others that have comparable top 3 characters.

This is such a fake problem to sit on the forums and complain about.

LavaManLee

@entrailbucket said:

>

Players with lvl480 characters are neither new nor weak, despite what they appear to think.

New players can buy a 450 IM right now for like USD$4 (or something like that). They absolutely can be new and weak.

entrailbucket

@LavaManLee said:

@entrailbucket said:

>

Players with lvl480 characters are neither new nor weak, despite what they appear to think.

New players can buy a 450 IM right now for like USD$4 (or something like that). They absolutely can be new and weak.

Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.

But what is the alternative here? How should it work? What do players expect when they build up their rosters? How can you prevent players from bullying smaller rosters without giving tougher opponents to bigger rosters?

If you want to be protected from me, then why shouldn't smaller rosters be protected from you?

meadowsweet

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

entrailbucket

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

This is how it worked 10 years ago, when the game first launched!

We broke it IMMEDIATELY. What we'd do was join an event (at 0 points) then retreat 100 or so times straight (can't lose points when you don't have any!) until our win/loss record went into the red, and the game started showing us 1* teams. Another fun one was joining lightning rounds just to retreat over and over.

LavaManLee

They've boxed themselves into a corner, unfortunately. Some games don't calculate the MMR until, essentially, you have chosen your team. Meaning that depending on who I throw out there, that is the team I see. So if I want to just fight with my 3*s at 266, that's fine. I won't see 550s but my rewards might not be as great. But it's too late for anything like that. That would break the system overall.

Again, I think a lot of this would be easier for noobs if they would just publish something about what to expect. It doesn't exist. Everything is patched together by tribal knowledge and previous posts. The communication gap, IMHO, is the biggest reason why new people quit. Not that they can't play their 2* Wolverine or they can't auto-fire. It's that the game makes no sense without lots and lots of extraneous work. Why make it so hard?

Heck, we can't even agree on what Ascension does and we've all been here 7+ years.

entrailbucket

The best way to solve the problem is relative balance, even though nobody seems to want that for whatever reason.

The game communicates to players that Wasp and Chasm are equal, because they both have 5 stars. How does a new player know which guys are better, without resorting to discord or the forum or whatever? If they have more stars, they're better!

Matchmaking assumes that Wasp and Chasm are roughly equivalent, that the Wasp player can generally beat the Chasm player, and vice versa.

What's breaking the system is the fact that there are these MASSIVE discrepancies in power within a tier. Fix that, and nobody has to worry about levelling up the "wrong" guy.

Scofie

@entrailbucket said:

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

This is how it worked 10 years ago, when the game first launched!

We broke it IMMEDIATELY. What we'd do was join an event (at 0 points) then retreat 100 or so times straight (can't lose points when you don't have any!) until our win/loss record went into the red, and the game started showing us 1* teams. Another fun one was joining lightning rounds just to retreat over and over.

But things are different now. What If your MMR was set a an average of the previous season and the current one so far. So, yeah you can try and game it, but in order to get the PvP rewards, you actually have to win something, and that puts it back level. You could miss almost an entire season to skew it but by trying to earn those "lost" rewards, the current season performance puts you back where you should be. Consistent players see the same. Try harder, punch up and win, you'll see tougher opponents until you get back to your natural level.

Phumade

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

ROFLCOPTR

Its worth mentioning that the game already employs elo scoring in matching. Your event points is your elo rating and the game establishes the matches point value based on an elo style formula.

Ultimately, who do you think MMR should be priotrizing? The biggest rosters are typically the most experienced and "skillful" players. Certainly, by move count or time per match, they are generally the fastest players in the game. Independent of how people view their playstlye/aggressiveness these are experienced and knowledgeable players.

FWIW, The top 25 leaderboard on both pvp and pve are a good measure of the skill, experience and dedication of those players. I really don't see names that shock me into thinking how they get that score?

Lets be realistic in assessing how a new player grows. a roster of 5* 450 champions is only viable to the 400-600 score range. Past 700, your going to be facing 480+ players with extensive game experience and knowledge.

entrailbucket

@Scofie said:
@entrailbucket said:

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

This is how it worked 10 years ago, when the game first launched!

We broke it IMMEDIATELY. What we'd do was join an event (at 0 points) then retreat 100 or so times straight (can't lose points when you don't have any!) until our win/loss record went into the red, and the game started showing us 1* teams. Another fun one was joining lightning rounds just to retreat over and over.

But things are different now. What If your MMR was set a an average of the previous season and the current one so far. So, yeah you can try and game it, but in order to get the PvP rewards, you actually have to win something, and that puts it back level. You could miss almost an entire season to skew it but by trying to earn those "lost" rewards, the current season performance puts you back where you should be. Consistent players see the same. Try harder, punch up and win, you'll see tougher opponents until you get back to your natural level.

I don't understand what you're describing here, sorry. When you say "an average of the current season and the previous one" are you talking about points scored, or win/loss record, or something else?

If it's points scored, that gets messy pretty fast, in a whole bunch of different ways.

meadowsweet

@Scofie said:
@entrailbucket said:

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

This is how it worked 10 years ago, when the game first launched!

We broke it IMMEDIATELY. What we'd do was join an event (at 0 points) then retreat 100 or so times straight (can't lose points when you don't have any!) until our win/loss record went into the red, and the game started showing us 1* teams. Another fun one was joining lightning rounds just to retreat over and over.

But things are different now. What If your MMR was set a an average of the previous season and the current one so far. So, yeah you can try and game it, but in order to get the PvP rewards, you actually have to win something, and that puts it back level. You could miss almost an entire season to skew it but by trying to earn those "lost" rewards, the current season performance puts you back where you should be. Consistent players see the same. Try harder, punch up and win, you'll see tougher opponents until you get back to your natural level.

Yeah, it would seem like there'd be some simple ways to identify the people who are "rope-a-doping" opponents by alternating between weak teams and strong teams and exclude that. Only use wins in the calculation, or longer-term averages, or median scores, whatever.

You could also use health as a proxy: if the winning team in a match is down to 10% of original team health with 2/3 characters KO'ed, that was a close match. If the 5★ team still has 99% of its health when it KO's the 2★ team... that was not a close match.

entrailbucket

@meadowsweet said:

@Scofie said:
@entrailbucket said:

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

This is how it worked 10 years ago, when the game first launched!

We broke it IMMEDIATELY. What we'd do was join an event (at 0 points) then retreat 100 or so times straight (can't lose points when you don't have any!) until our win/loss record went into the red, and the game started showing us 1* teams. Another fun one was joining lightning rounds just to retreat over and over.

But things are different now. What If your MMR was set a an average of the previous season and the current one so far. So, yeah you can try and game it, but in order to get the PvP rewards, you actually have to win something, and that puts it back level. You could miss almost an entire season to skew it but by trying to earn those "lost" rewards, the current season performance puts you back where you should be. Consistent players see the same. Try harder, punch up and win, you'll see tougher opponents until you get back to your natural level.

Yeah, it would seem like there'd be some simple ways to identify the people who are "rope-a-doping" opponents by alternating between weak teams and strong teams and exclude that. Only use wins in the calculation, or longer-term averages, or median scores, whatever.

You could also use health as a proxy: if the winning team in a match is down to 10% of original team health with 2/3 characters KO'ed, that was a close match. If the 5★ team still has 99% of its health when it KO's the 2★ team... that was not a close match.

This is easy to say but very hard to do in practice. It's also going to be pretty trivial to game the system. For example, if health lost matters, why can't I just bring guys who hurt themselves or each other? What if I just drag out every fight purposely so I get hurt more?

Bowgentle

Basically, this community is EXTREMELY good at breaking PVP.
Which is how we ended up with layers upon layers upon layers of fixes for every exploit we ever found.
Which is also why we have zero confidence in the MMR rework they've promised for a year now.

Scofie

@entrailbucket said:

@Scofie said:
@entrailbucket said:

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Matchmaking is based on top 3, not top 1, so buying and levelling up that Iron Man won't immediately throw them to the wolves.
But what is the alternative here? How should it work?

It's probably not realistic, but I keep wondering how different would be if the game's PVP was based on an Elo or chess-style rating system: every player has a score / ranking. When you win, it goes up. When you lose, it goes down. The amount it goes up or down is based on your opponent's ranking (so an underdog upset matters more than a coin-toss competition between equals.)

Levels of top characters isn't a terrible approximation, but in reality someone who has Level 550 Chasm, Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Okoye, Hulk, etc. is not the same as someone whose only Level 550's are Wasp, Rescue, Loki, Archangel, Jeffrey, etc. The first player would have a much higher Elo (because they almost always win) while the second player's Elo would go down (because they often lose against teams with a better meta / synergy.)

So your match-making would be based on your actual performance, skill, or win-loss records. Not just based on the fact that you impulsively decided to level up Mysterio, Northstar, and Talos prematurely...

This is how it worked 10 years ago, when the game first launched!

We broke it IMMEDIATELY. What we'd do was join an event (at 0 points) then retreat 100 or so times straight (can't lose points when you don't have any!) until our win/loss record went into the red, and the game started showing us 1* teams. Another fun one was joining lightning rounds just to retreat over and over.

But things are different now. What If your MMR was set a an average of the previous season and the current one so far. So, yeah you can try and game it, but in order to get the PvP rewards, you actually have to win something, and that puts it back level. You could miss almost an entire season to skew it but by trying to earn those "lost" rewards, the current season performance puts you back where you should be. Consistent players see the same. Try harder, punch up and win, you'll see tougher opponents until you get back to your natural level.

I don't understand what you're describing here, sorry. When you say "an average of the current season and the previous one" are you talking about points scored, or win/loss record, or something else?

If it's points scored, that gets messy pretty fast, in a whole bunch of different ways.

I'll admit I didn't put much thought into it. 🙂

It could be a combination of different things: win/loss ratio (but points average gained/lost, rather than actual losses?), placement from previous season, average strength of the top 10, rather than 3, Shield Rank etc. Each one of those factors could have a weighting, and you can see the 100 players above and below you in each slice etc.

My basic point was: I think it needs to consider longer term player data - you can break one event but sabotaging your whole season is really unlikely. There is so much player data you could analyse now that a dynamic system for calculating suitable opponents can be made with safeguards in. I get that players will try and break it, and at this stage of the game, I'd think the top players would probably enjoy trying to break an MMR system that constantly responded to their workarounds.

Scofie

@meadowsweet

You could also use health as a proxy: if the winning team in a match is down to 10% of original team health with 2/3 characters KO'ed, that was a close match. If the 5★ team still has 99% of its health when it KO's the 2★ team... that was not a close match.

I agree with this in principle but in the Class of 2023 event, I've finished with anywhere between 50% and 95% average health for similar levelled opponents. A lucky or unlucky cascade shouldn't be able to impact who you face next.