Some thoughts on BG

A couple of things occurred to me during the last few matches in Battlegrounds.

I lost a match despite beating my opponent while the other guy timed out against my champion. I won my fight by the skin of my teeth with just a few percent of health left, while the other guy timed out with around 50% health left. This remaining health gave them more points than my actual victory gave me, which then granted them the overall victory. I found that profoundly weird. I won my fight; they did not. I feel like that should overrule any other parameter when determining a winner, surely?

The second thing is much more niche but I can imagine that it can have some other consequences as well.

I was facing a beefy Nick Fury and had just gotten him into his second life when he wombo-combo'd me into oblivion. However, when I entered the stat screen, it gave me basically no "damage on the opponent" points since Nick Fury was "at almost full health" due to having just entered his second life. Obviously I'd taken off 50% of his health by that point but that effort wasn't recognized.

Now, this might seem like a problem that's restricted to one champion. However, I think there are possible scenarios where it affects others as well. For example, an awakened Ultron heals a ton when taking energy damage, after a small delay. If you launch an energy attack against him that doesn't just outright kill him, he'll bounce back up quickly. Imagine if you launch it just as the time-out kicks in. You do your damage but don't kill him, but he doesn't have the time to revert the damage that you did. Thanks to the fight closing artificially, you end up doing 70% more damage than you would otherwise have done. It's kind of a reverse situation to the Nick Fury one, where the system didn't recognize the damage that had in fact been done since he "regenerated back up to full".

I recognize that the second point is a lot more niche that might be a problem worth looking into, or might not be. I'll let Kabam decide there. However, the first point is worth reiterating. Won matches should always count for much more than timed-out matches. I've timed out several times due to Safeguard and while it always sucks, it also always means that I failed. Sometimes we've both failed and other parameters have had to decide who failed less, but I have never begrudged someone a victory if they've actually beaten my champ even at low health. They did, in fact, complete the fight whereas I did not. I would feel equally weird if I had somehow been given the victory in such a scenario, with the roles reversed compared to where I lost despite winning my fight. It just doesn't feel very fair.

Comments

Gamer

I’m had a fight I’m wil had timeout to but quit to my surprise I’m won because. I’m had more hp so wired

Raichu626

A couple of things occurred to me during the last few matches in Battlegrounds.

I lost a match despite beating my opponent while the other guy timed out against my champion. I won my fight by the skin of my teeth with just a few percent of health left, while the other guy timed out with around 50% health left. This remaining health gave them more points than my actual victory gave me, which then granted them the overall victory. I found that profoundly weird. I won my fight; they did not. I feel like that should overrule any other parameter when determining a winner, surely?

Not really tho. Since they had more health left it's reasonable to assume they would've been able to beat the opponent had they had more time. But you had almost no health left, so if your opponent had had more health you would've likely been defeated. Makes sense that you don't just win by default.

BitterSteel

The trouble with any system for points scoring is that you can find fringe cases that won’t fit into it.

If you make the system whichever player beats the opponent wins, then you allow fringe cases like:

Player 1 - gets taken down to 1hp, but just about scrapes through and beats the opponent

Player 2 - remains on 100% HP, and takes the opponent down to 1HP.

So overall, I think most of us would say on balance that player 2 did better. Weighing up health of attacker and defender, there’s a 1hp difference on the defender, and a 100% difference on the attacker.

If you ask someone who performed better, who fought better. I would doubt anyone who said player 1, they lost almost all their health. That’s not good fighting to me.

Now, the only slight argument in player 1s favour is “But Bitter, player 1 beat the fight and player 2 didn’t”. And yes, that’s true, but BGs objective isn’t to beat the fight. That sounds weird, but it’s true. Battlegrounds objective is to score more points than your opponent.

Winning the fight will give you extra points in the time taken bracket - which is essentially a flat amount of points for winning a fight, that is then affected linearly by how long you take to do it. Winning a fight with one second left is almost the same as timing out, hence barely getting any points for it.

“But Bitter, in AW we automatically get a win for beating the opponent”. No, you automatically get attack bonuses for beating the opponent. You get diversity points, exploration points, defender remaining points as well. I’ve seen a lot of people making comparisons with AW individual fights, but it’s more like a war in general. Take a 1 BG war. You don’t get an automatic win in war if you beat the boss and your opponent doesn’t, in fact it’s possible to beat the boss and still lose if the opponent maximises other aspects of the scoring system while you just boss rush. Killing the boss is one aspect of the scoring system.

It’s the exact same sort of system. The parameters (attacker health remaining, time taken, defender health remaining for BGs and diversity, exploration, killing the boss, defenders remaining, attack bonuses for AW) add up scores and whichever player/alliance has more points wins. Not just whichever beats the opponent or boss.

Because that removes fringe cases where one competitor has done objectively better than the other, but a binary win/loss system awards it to whoever got a shaky win.

So with the scoring system we have, we have to play to it’s parameters. That means you need to focus on health as well as beating the opponent.

Now sure, you’ll get cases where someone says this is too important, this one particular match doesn’t look fair. And yeah, that may happen. But a scoring system reduces the amount of situations that can happen, whereas a binary win/loss increases it.

If there is a theoretical system that is so specific that it completely covers every possible aspect of a fight to the point where no fringe cases exist, it’s so complicated and specific that it’s not gonna be suitable. And if it were implemented, nobody would be able to understand it.

Aburaees

Timing out with more health than the defender is a win. If you were a boxer, would you rather KO your opponent AND end up in hospital, or dominate your opponent and win a unanimous decision?

Qacob

Timing out with more health than the defender is a win. If you were a boxer, would you rather KO your opponent AND end up in hospital, or dominate your opponent and win a unanimous decision?

Lad, that's the second time you've used this analogy, and I get what you're saying but it doesn't really work. In your example, both boxers win, in a round of BGs, only one player can win. And if these two boxers were against each other, it doesn't matter how injured they are, the one that knocks out their opponent wins.

IvarTheBoneless

That nick fury point is an interesting one and I have used it to my advantage many times now.

If I don't feel confident in taking down both lives of nicn throughout the fight I slow down my fight and stall. I try to preserve as much health as possible while getting nick as close to 1% health as possible. Because of this I get almost all the points for KO'ing my opponent at the cost of my time points.

It's interesting how the calculation only accounts for 100% health while nick basically has 200%.

Colinwhitworth69

As long as we all play by the same rules, I’m good.

I have used the Fury thing to my advantage — as an attacker and defender.

unknown

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Ercarret

A couple of things occurred to me during the last few matches in Battlegrounds.

I lost a match despite beating my opponent while the other guy timed out against my champion. I won my fight by the skin of my teeth with just a few percent of health left, while the other guy timed out with around 50% health left. This remaining health gave them more points than my actual victory gave me, which then granted them the overall victory. I found that profoundly weird. I won my fight; they did not. I feel like that should overrule any other parameter when determining a winner, surely?
Not really tho. Since they had more health left it's reasonable to assume they would've been able to beat the opponent had they had more time. But you had almost no health left, so if your opponent had had more health you would've likely been defeated. Makes sense that you don't just win by default.

I absolutely get what you're saying. But at the same time, the thing with Safeguard is that every champ can beat the node eventually but few (relatively speaking) can beat it within the time restraints. I had to be a bit reckless and eat a special attack in order to win the fight in time; my opponent played more safe but was still far from winning. They would have won in maybe two or three fights' time. If I had had that kind of time as well, I wouldn't have needed to play as reckless either and the whole situation would have looked different in many ways.

But it is an interesting conversation. I think @Bittersteel mentioned a lot of great points. I'm strapped for time so I can't comment on much, so I'll just thank you guys for giving me things to think about.

Aburaees

Timing out with more health than the defender is a win. If you were a boxer, would you rather KO your opponent AND end up in hospital, or dominate your opponent and win a unanimous decision?
Lad, that's the second time you've used this analogy, and I get what you're saying but it doesn't really work. In your example, both boxers win, in a round of BGs, only one player can win. And if these two boxers were against each other, it doesn't matter how injured they are, the one that knocks out their opponent wins.

My friend, it might be the second time I’ve used the analogy, but I think you’ll find these threads outnumber my use of said analogy. It’s fair game as far as I’m concerned.

In a round of BG’s both players can win (their respective fight) but then it’s a matter of who wins better (to decide the round) since a direct PvP isn’t possible.

The boxing analogy is the only one that works. And the question still stands, would you rather win comfortably or win with a Pyrrhic victory?

In combats sports people put the KO on a pedestal, but some of the most exciting fights go the distance, and some of the most technically great fighters win by points/decision at a greater frequency - compare Fury and Wilder.

Imagine trying to change the UFC back to its original framework where only a finish was a real win, that’s the analogy for what we’re seeing here.