**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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Challenger Rating MODS please
jeyrey2000
Posts: 91 ★
Hello Mods, can someone please do a VERY detailed description of the factors that are impacted by Challenger rating? There is much confusion and debate and the original description was vague to say the least. Description with examples would be great.
example challenger rating effects armor - challenger rating 110 vs 100 will decrease armor by 10%. or challenger rating will reduce abilities by 10%.
example challenger rating effects armor - challenger rating 110 vs 100 will decrease armor by 10%. or challenger rating will reduce abilities by 10%.
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At the same time they added challenger rating, which is just a number, they also added critical resistance, block penetration, critical damage multiplier, critical damage flat bonus, challenger rating multiplier, DR curve control parameter, and a few other parameters I'd rather not have to explain. It is just as likely that any of these numbers could be responsible for bugs in unrelated parts of the game as challenger rating. People have been focused on CR since 12.0 because the mods mentioned it. Ironic, because critical resistance and block penetration were not explicitly mentioned in the original documentation, but was actually responsible for basically all of the increased "challenge" in 12.0.
As to the challenger rating "code" I don't know what that looks like specifically, but I do know what it is used for.
StatPercentage = StatFlat / (StatFlat + CRMult * ChallengeRating + CurveControl)
The challenge rating code probably implements that formula as an algorithm in the combat engine in C++. It is the formula that converts flat stats into percentages. If you know that CRMult is 5 and CurveControl is 1500, you can plug numbers into that formula and double check the new stat to percentage display in the game for challenge rating = 100 (except for critical damage: take the output, multiply by 5 and add 50% to get that: those two numbers are the critical damage multiplier and critical damage flat bonus I mention above).
Again: the devs added a ton of stuff in 12.0, almost none of which was explained to the players until much later, or to this day never. Challenge rating has the unfortunate notoriety of being explicitly mentioned in the Kabam announcement. If it hadn't been, I guess everyone would be wondering if procDelay was responsible for most of the bugs in the game.
A lot of people do, including me. But for some reason, the Kabam devs seem very reticent to discuss any more of the game implementation than they absolutely have to. I've been describing the new mechanics since I learned them myself after 12.0 released, and I know the mods have seen my posts and I believe the devs have seen them, and no one seems to have raised an objection yet. That doesn't mean I'm absolutely right, but I suspect if I was saying something totally wrong someone would at some point step in to correct me.
So far, all of the DR/CR calculations have been verified accurate, which suggests the original information about how the CR parameter is used in the game is likely to be correct. Beyond that, I would love for a dev to either verify or contradict anything of what I've been saying for a while now.
People are looking for something that is making the AI harder. But I think it is equally likely that Kabam made the AI harder directly. We know that the computer uses different AI profiles for the same champion in different situations. The same 2000 PI champion that is a hard champion for one player and attacks aggressively will just stand there like a statue when he is the easy champion for a player using much higher rated stuff. Some people are assuming that the player PI has a direct effect on the AI. But it is also possible the effect is indirect: when you are in the arena and the arena decides based on your rating and the current streak count that the fight is "easy" it uses easy AI. When it decides the fight should be hard it uses harder AI. Outside of the arena it is possible that this happens with other situations: the AI gets harder on day 5 than day 1 of AQ. The AI is harder in Chapter 5 than Chapter 3. Player PI might factor into how the game decides whether the fight should be easy or hard or something in between, but it might not be a direct effect.
I suspect that when 12.0 released the devs made changes to the enemy AI profiles. Maybe they redid them. Maybe the AI engine was changed in 12.0 and so they had to rewrite them for the new engine, and they couldn't precisely replicate the old AI behavior. I don't think things have gotten universally harder, but I think the AI has gotten more unpredictable in general. And less predictable is being experienced by the players as "harder" because our finger skill and learned tactics don't always work the way they used to.
I don't think this was deliberate. Why? Because this random weirdness doesn't always go against the player. I've seen champions that literally appear to have forgotten they have special attacks. I can't bait them no matter what I do, I assume I'm a dead man so I just go ham on them, and even when they get to three bars they don't just immediately shoot the special three: sometimes they never use anything right up to the moment when I kill them. That was an extreme rarity in 11.x and earlier. It happens often enough now to be noteworthy since 12.0.
My hunch is that 12.0 included a platform change, meaning the basic engine that the game itself runs within was upgraded or otherwise changed. That change required them to redo many things that were not specifically intended to change in 12.0, but have simply because they couldn't replicate 11.x exactly. I think enemy AI is one of those things.
I also thing something is up with the way the animation and combat engines connect together that is different in 12.x forward from 11.x and backward. I think this is causing enemy AI to act when they ordinarily wouldn't be able to , or to act faster than they ought to be able to, and this is also being noticed as the enemy AI getting "harder." I would bet money that something like this is the origin of the parry bug and the double dash back bug.
I believe CR is mentioned so often because there is a noticeable decrease in defensive/offensive ability against players with higher PI even though they have no such ability. Since CR was mentioned to affect ability accuracy it was the one immediately associated.
The truth is that higher rated opponents in AW and AQ now cause very weird occurrences, like abilities with 100% accuracy randomly not procing (e.g. SIM/IM/Ultron regens) and other very frequent abilities not occuring (e.g. BW reducing Spidey evade, Wolverine procing regens).
What other game mechanics can be generating this? Why does my Wolvie get almost no regens at day 3 of an AQ event against a 6k Spidey or RH, but have plenty when facing a 14k Nebula on Master mode single player questing, for example?
I used to think it was CR until recently. It's all still vague from the dev team posts that just higher rated enemies are harder...basically, making it harder to beat hard content with 3*s
The issue isn't really the Ai either. I love the more challenging and diverse Ai, but just the coincidence with our champ commands makes it frustrating. Not to mention, a "tie" always gives the enemy an advantage.
And yes, the Ai is based on situation like you said. Harder content changes the Ai difficulty. Not really based off PI since 1k PI duel targets are skittish and jump around like AQ bosses.
As far as I'm aware, Challenge rating has never been stated to affect ability accuracy in any way.
I have a theory that the difficulty of the AI is increasing the amount of Buffs the opponent generates, but ours are generated on the minimum level. I've had it since pre-12.0. I don't know for certain. Just a thought. I've seen it in the Arena, and harder Quests. The Infinite Streak is a good example. The amount of Evade and Parry/Resist procured is intense. In my opinion, the AI has more to do with it than CR. If I am correct, this would be to present more of a challenge. The problem with my theory is that there are still Fights where our Abilities are working optimally, so it's not a consistent theory to suggest ours is inhibited. I definitely think that the AI triggers more than the usual. The harder the difficulty, the more the AI will trigger Buffs and Abilities.
Saw it clearly quoted from Kabam Mike in the old forums, but because they were deleted, it's no longer able to be proven unless someone still has a screenshot.
Knock yourself out: http://community.wonderhill.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?1239-Marvel-Contest-of-Champions
Wow. They really made that difficult to navigate, didn't they?
If you enter the General Discussion Forum, you can click on Advanced Search and it's still functional.
We had Dorosh write up a lot of information for you all, but instead of posting it here, we decided to make another Sticky post in the announcements section that is always easy to find: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/2317/challenger-rating-explained
Thanks Miike. I figured that's how it worked. I just never had the percentages that were affected. Thanks to Dorosh. It's been one of the most confusing factors for many people.
A lot to digest.
Would also appreciate if an explanation on how challenger rating would interact with diminishing returns (or is it explained already and pardon me)?
Thank you.
I enjoyed the write up! More stuff like this is always welcome. Thank you Dorosh
The writeup confirms the explanation I gave, which is that the only way challenger rating affects anything is that it is a component of the diminishing returns formula. As a result, CR only affects things that DR affects, and those stats are explicitly listed in the post. The only thing he didn't mention was the critical damage formula, which is: CritDamage = DR(critDamageStat) * 5 + 50%
Nice to have confirmation I didn't steer anyone wrong since 12.0.