Matchmaking in BG needs real examination

I posted some of this in another thread but I think that it warrants proper examination and ideally comment from Kabam.

I’m going to take you on a little journey of my BG experience this season so far.

With the launch of BG yesterday I loaded up my deck. The deck I’ve spent upgrading since the betas were launched and it’s in a place where I’m very happy with it. It’s strong, it helped me get to Mysterium 1 last season and as I said, is the result of months of work:

This deck will only fight players of equal, or in many cases, greater strength than my own as it’s probably in the top 2% or so of players, at least until I reach the circuit and matchmaking opens up a little bit. The highlight of this deck’s experience was this absolute unit who I only beat because he had an absolute ‘mare with my Doom:

I then saw a topic discussing prestige, or deck prestige as the major factor in matchmaking and decided that as I had full energy and bronze III is low stakes I’d have a bit of fun and see what happened when I switched my deck up.

I loaded up with only my 5*, mostly max sig 5/65, a pretty decent deck and representing my Cavalier days before 6* were so common and R3s were a myth unless you owned a Ferrari.

This is what I was matched with:

Two decks one stronger than my 5*, one weaker but both representing different stages of game development and ability.

I then decided to go further, and switched it out for my 4* and R3 5*, curious as to how far I could affect my opponents simply by changing my deck:

This is the poor guy I matched, a complete newbie whose 3 developed champions were obvious instant bans leaving him with virtually nothing in the locker.

I then switched out these for my 3*, and having ranked a good deal of them up I’m able to make a pretty ‘meta’ deck.

This was the point I was thinking that I’d come up against a sweaty Paragon trying to creep under the radar, and guess what, I was right:

All max 3*, capped by a Platpool profile pic (cropped).

After putting this guy to the sword I then loaded up my 2* - all of which are maxed, so stand by for some 2* Mojo and Korg action:

The rot goes deep, this was my opponent, and he was good too. I’m not sure if this was an off game for me, but he was certainly good enough to be playing with his proper roster rather than sneaking around down here - unless it was research too:

Comments

G-Hun-Gear

At this point, it just goes to show that the changes to matchmaking are not live, since it still seems to be based on deck strength… Not player prestige, not prestige of top 5 champs in the deck.

That being said, Sandbagging still works and we will have to see when the proposed changes go live…

Colinwhitworth69

And?

Mauled

My biggest takeaway from this is that match making is very much roster dependent and sandbagging, or manipulation, is still very much a viable option - which it absolutely should not be.

The sweet spot is the R3 5*/4* level which brings you into contact with 99% noobs while lower down it seems like you’re going to get skilled players with maxed 3* decks and you may as well just use your proper deck and be done with it.

The question then, is did I waste my time ranking up all those 6*? It kind of feels like it, at least if all you want is access to the circuit and aren’t interested in pushing. Obviously if you have a deck like the whale at the top you’re probably always at an advantage, or at worst in equal ground but for everyone else it’s easier to just bully the noobs.

The answer is to remove roster strength from matchmaking completely. Perhaps they could introduce seeding, so at least the lower players can play for a bit before hitting a wall. Another option would be to make it a bit more like the football pyramid. Restructuring the rewards would be necessary but it’d improve the process overall.

IamGrO_ot

Changed the whole deck to 4*r5…to see what happens. First fight...Paragon with plenty of 2* in deck.

And this is what he got to pick…

Sandbaggers are so fun…🤢

Use your 4*r5s…no problem, that can be fun and fair fights…bur 6R1 and 2*s…F you !

Dragoon81

My biggest takeaway from this is that match making is very much roster dependent and sandbagging, or manipulation, is still very much a viable option - which it absolutely should not be.

The sweet spot is the R3 5*/4* level which brings you into contact with 99% noobs while lower down it seems like you’re going to get skilled players with maxed 3* decks and you may as well just use your proper deck and be done with it.

The question then, is did I waste my time ranking up all those 6*? It kind of feels like it, at least if all you want is access to the circuit and aren’t interested in pushing. Obviously if you have a deck like the whale at the top you’re probably always at an advantage, or at worst in equal ground but for everyone else it’s easier to just bully the noobs.

The answer is to remove roster strength from matchmaking completely. Perhaps they could introduce seeding, so at least the lower players can play for a bit before hitting a wall. Another option would be to make it a bit more like the football pyramid. Restructuring the rewards would be necessary but it’d improve the process overall.

I don’t really see a winning situation here. You say match everyone against everyone so we aren’t having sand baggers pick on noobs. If everyone matches everyone what do you think those noobs will feel like facing that Whale you got up there. This just isn’t a viable game mode, but the rewards.

Mauled

My biggest takeaway from this is that match making is very much roster dependent and sandbagging, or manipulation, is still very much a viable option - which it absolutely should not be.

The sweet spot is the R3 5*/4* level which brings you into contact with 99% noobs while lower down it seems like you’re going to get skilled players with maxed 3* decks and you may as well just use your proper deck and be done with it.

The question then, is did I waste my time ranking up all those 6*? It kind of feels like it, at least if all you want is access to the circuit and aren’t interested in pushing. Obviously if you have a deck like the whale at the top you’re probably always at an advantage, or at worst in equal ground but for everyone else it’s easier to just bully the noobs.

The answer is to remove roster strength from matchmaking completely. Perhaps they could introduce seeding, so at least the lower players can play for a bit before hitting a wall. Another option would be to make it a bit more like the football pyramid. Restructuring the rewards would be necessary but it’d improve the process overall.
I don’t really see a winning situation here. You say match everyone against everyone so we aren’t having sand baggers pick on noobs. If everyone matches everyone what do you think those noobs will feel like facing that Whale you got up there. This just isn’t a viable game mode, but the rewards.

I personally think that there needs to be more of a division system like in LoL. The first few seasons would have some horribly mismatched games as the real leaders come through the pack. If they can rework the reward table so that players don’t lose out for being near the top of the table and playing harder matches but still make progression and attractive prospect then the game mode is on to a winner.

I do agree that in a true free for all, a fair few players are going to lose out, but the flip side of it is, regular players with big rosters plodding along in G3 alliances will see my deck and think they’ve got no chance because they’re simply not that great at the game, but will have a fairer matchup when they come across a TB player with a small deck who’s good in game.

I think that the matchups being based around points, as they are in the circuit, comes a bit too late in the process.

Asim38

This isn't sandbagging though. Sandbagging is when you are mixing different prestige in your deck regardless of what rarity the champs are. People out there that are mixing their decks with half 6 star R4 and R3 with half 2 stars or 1 stars. Here you are just setting up a matchup against someone who has equivalent strength to your deck. If anything, this looks fair. If you mixed up your deck with 6 stars and 2 stars and then faced someone with a deck full of 4 stars or 5 stars at R4 or below, then that's a problem. And THAT I believe is what Kabam fixed. No more sandbagging. Anyone who sandbags will be at a disadvantage. They likely are only taking the prestige of the top half or top 10 champs in the deck to determine a fair matchup. Sandbagging eliminated.

IMO, this is fair for anyone who made the jump to Thronebreaker or Paragon by getting lucky with their pulls without having developed higher rarity champs in the deck. You can find people that have a 2M base hero rating while still being Cavalier and then you can find people with 1.2M base hero rating who have made it to Thronebreaker or even Paragon. Otherwise the mode would be useless to them and they would only keep losing without moving up.

Can matchmaking be improved upon? Sure. Will it be more complex? Definitely. And complexity could lead to more matchmaking issues.

IamGrO_ot

There is one way to fix the problem, and that is to move back to start. In Beta one started on different scores...I belive TB was 1500ish.

One got 15 points for a win and -15 for a loss. This was removed, because many lost many matches to get easy matches and complete solo objects. That is no longer a problem, since you now actually have to win to get ✔️ on a solo object.

Starting UC/Cav at 1200 points, TB at 1500 and Paragons at 1800, players will end up where they belong.

Good Cavs can battle through bad TBs, good TBs can overcome weak Paragons, etc…

There is no good reason why good Paragons with almost only R4s should spoil the gaming experience of UC/Cavs and partly TBs, by starting at the same rating/level/group.

Moosetiptronic

@Mauled , I don't believe this is hyperbole to say that this is possibly the most interesting topic, live, on the boards today. Saw your post earlier and this follow up is intriguing.

Kabam needs to speak up on what their intentions are here, as I for one (paragon with 4r4s) don't want to be perpetually matched with people with your strength of main deck, in bronze 3, waiting for rngeesus to give me 2-3 wins in a row for each tier based on a forced 50% win rate against equal strength decks.

So I'll roll a 4* and r3 5* Dec, with some manipulation, until they bring some clarity to this.

For example, I observe with interest the r1 6* or 4/55 5* mixed in with r2s, above, to even further tilt the matchmaking.... Everyone is looking for a competitive edge in this game mode..

Ironman3000

Matchmaking is just garbage. Matching on deck strength is not the way to do it.

Ironman3000

My biggest takeaway from this is that match making is very much roster dependent and sandbagging, or manipulation, is still very much a viable option - which it absolutely should not be.

The sweet spot is the R3 5*/4* level which brings you into contact with 99% noobs while lower down it seems like you’re going to get skilled players with maxed 3* decks and you may as well just use your proper deck and be done with it.

The question then, is did I waste my time ranking up all those 6*? It kind of feels like it, at least if all you want is access to the circuit and aren’t interested in pushing. Obviously if you have a deck like the whale at the top you’re probably always at an advantage, or at worst in equal ground but for everyone else it’s easier to just bully the noobs.

The answer is to remove roster strength from matchmaking completely. Perhaps they could introduce seeding, so at least the lower players can play for a bit before hitting a wall. Another option would be to make it a bit more like the football pyramid. Restructuring the rewards would be necessary but it’d improve the process overall.
I don’t really see a winning situation here. You say match everyone against everyone so we aren’t having sand baggers pick on noobs. If everyone matches everyone what do you think those noobs will feel like facing that Whale you got up there. This just isn’t a viable game mode, but the rewards.

The solution is simple and used in literally every other competitive pvp game ever. Either give higher players higher multipliers so they move up faster, just start them higher or have separate brackets based on progression.

Starting everyone at 0 with the same multiplier, while fighting for the same rewards is awful and stupid. You would think that they learned from when they did this in AW.

QuikPik

I recall last season I was sitting in Gold2 and it searched all the way to platinum to find someone close to my deck strength. I'm sure there were plenty of other people looking for a match in G2 at the time. Looking that far out of a tier is just garbage.

DrZola

I posted some of this in another thread but I think that it warrants proper examination and ideally comment from Kabam.

I’m going to take you on a little journey of my BG experience this season so far.

With the launch of BG yesterday I loaded up my deck. The deck I’ve spent upgrading since the betas were launched and it’s in a place where I’m very happy with it. It’s strong, it helped me get to Mysterium 1 last season and as I said, is the result of months of work:

This deck will only fight players of equal, or in many cases, greater strength than my own as it’s probably in the top 2% or so of players, at least until I reach the circuit and matchmaking opens up a little bit. The highlight of this deck’s experience was this absolute unit who I only beat because he had an absolute ‘mare with my Doom:

I then saw a topic discussing prestige, or deck prestige as the major factor in matchmaking and decided that as I had full energy and bronze III is low stakes I’d have a bit of fun and see what happened when I switched my deck up.

I loaded up with only my 5*, mostly max sig 5/65, a pretty decent deck and representing my Cavalier days before 6* were so common and R3s were a myth unless you owned a Ferrari.

This is what I was matched with:

Two decks one stronger than my 5*, one weaker but both representing different stages of game development and ability.

I then decided to go further, and switched it out for my 4* and R3 5*, curious as to how far I could affect my opponents simply by changing my deck:

This is the poor guy I matched, a complete newbie whose 3 developed champions were obvious instant bans leaving him with virtually nothing in the locker.

I then switched out these for my 3*, and having ranked a good deal of them up I’m able to make a pretty ‘meta’ deck.

This was the point I was thinking that I’d come up against a sweaty Paragon trying to creep under the radar, and guess what, I was right:

All max 3*, capped by a Platpool profile pic (cropped).

After putting this guy to the sword I then loaded up my 2* - all of which are maxed, so stand by for some 2* Mojo and Korg action:

The rot goes deep, this was my opponent, and he was good too. I’m not sure if this was an off game for me, but he was certainly good enough to be playing with his proper roster rather than sneaking around down here - unless it was research too:

Same experience testing your methodology. I will admit…it was enjoyable playing champs who aren’t in my usual deck (Hypo, Venom, e.g.) so it wasn’t a total experiential loss. But it was interesting seeing stripped down decks with an account 5.5K lower in prestige than mine.

Just an experiment, and one I don’t plan on continuing. But it was possibly more fun trying to use 4* Hypo to race to the finish line instead of staring a deck of R3/4 max sig Galans, Spider Supremes, IIMs and QS in the face.

Dr. Zola

IamGrO_ot

Tried 2 rounds with a only maxed out 2*s deck…I won both matches, against TBs.

One only ran maxed 2*s, the other one ran only maxed 3*r1s...same value anyways as both attacker/defender.

Fun, because I don't have any of the extremely good 2*s, and if you make a mistake...game over 😅

Moosetiptronic

@Kabam Jax is there any chance of having an update from the developers of what the intention from this matchmaking process is and whether matching on deck strength is only for the victory track?

I.e. is this game mode specifically designed to give you a matched strength deck for the opponent, regardless of tier from bronze to diamond? We are all guessing that this is the case.

I'm one of those g2 paragons that @Mauled mentions and if I need to grind through this many fights without obtaining any advantage from the investment in my main deck, then it would be good to know, so that I can focus more on building out 3* and 4* decks to make it more palatable and also affordable to adjust a deck for each meta.

Chikel

@Mauled , I don't believe this is hyperbole to say that this is possibly the most interesting topic, live, on the boards today. Saw your post earlier and this follow up is intriguing.

Kabam needs to speak up on what their intentions are here, as I for one (paragon with 4r4s) don't want to be perpetually matched with people with your strength of main deck, in bronze 3, waiting for rngeesus to give me 2-3 wins in a row for each tier based on a forced 50% win rate against equal strength decks.

So I'll roll a 4* and r3 5* Dec, with some manipulation, until they bring some clarity to this.

For example, I observe with interest the r1 6* or 4/55 5* mixed in with r2s, above, to even further tilt the matchmaking.... Everyone is looking for a competitive edge in this game mode..

I became Paragon last week and it might as well be my worst decision BGs-wise. My matchmaking algorithm went bonkers. I'm getting matched against people with a dozen r4s and a full roster of r3s.

It also happened when I got my 2nd r4 and prevented me from making it to the gladiator's circuit. I lost 9 matches in a row. A record for me since my previous worst was 5 matches.

I don't know how their matchmaking works but a single r4 shouldn't throw it out of whack like that.

AverageDesi

I tried an all 3* deck. The opponent lost miserably. I feel bad for them. And no joy at winning at all

MrNoname

Require me to play max prestige account in bronze iii if i use my optimal rosters is non-sense. They are all endgame players who plays aw at highest level and mostly have maximum skills and knowledge how champions interact. We may have average prestige within certain range but the strength of their skills/ rosters/hard defenders made it extremely hard to win in a row to progress. Even if it is 50% win-rate, it will hurt when you need that win in a row to progress (2-5 wins required. You have to sell that shield,do you?)

However, If i tune down my account, such as using just 5* (still not all top champs since when i have 6*, i don’t update some 5* and it is a waste of resource) i win most of the fights against similar rosters with same average prestige I tuned down (because well people who have account at this level usually lack experience and knowledge how champions interact, comparing to me. So rosters have similar power but i usually play better.

I feel i was punished for having a strong account. And i struck if i use my optimal team. What is the point for having that strong rosters and progress in the game then? Having hi prestige team should not be disadvantage to progress.

Just make anyone match with anyone in the same tier or fix the system that require people like me to win in a rows against max account to progress. (Since bronze and silver lol)

Vergeman78

I’m paragon with 6 6r4 and an overall rating of 2.3m. I built my deck with my top attackers and defenders for this meta and was getting matched consistently against 3m+ accounts with a dozen 6r4.

The beauty of victory track is when you start a level, you can’t fall back to the previous one so it’s the perfect time to try and tweak your deck. And I didn’t do much, just removed 2 high prestige champs and replaced them with 2 good 6r2s.

Well since then, I’ve matched 2.5m accounts with similar deck strength. Seems prestige has a big impact on matchmaking and, to be fair, doesn’t always translate into good attack or defense option. So test things out, there’s a difference between tweaking your deck and sandbagging

ItsClobberinTime

My biggest takeaway from this is that match making is very much roster dependent and sandbagging, or manipulation, is still very much a viable option - which it absolutely should not be.

The sweet spot is the R3 5*/4* level which brings you into contact with 99% noobs while lower down it seems like you’re going to get skilled players with maxed 3* decks and you may as well just use your proper deck and be done with it.

The question then, is did I waste my time ranking up all those 6*? It kind of feels like it, at least if all you want is access to the circuit and aren’t interested in pushing. Obviously if you have a deck like the whale at the top you’re probably always at an advantage, or at worst in equal ground but for everyone else it’s easier to just bully the noobs.

The answer is to remove roster strength from matchmaking completely. Perhaps they could introduce seeding, so at least the lower players can play for a bit before hitting a wall. Another option would be to make it a bit more like the football pyramid. Restructuring the rewards would be necessary but it’d improve the process overall.
I don’t really see a winning situation here. You say match everyone against everyone so we aren’t having sand baggers pick on noobs. If everyone matches everyone what do you think those noobs will feel like facing that Whale you got up there. This just isn’t a viable game mode, but the rewards.

Eventually most whales like that one will move up though, probably reach GC at which point it won't be as much of an issue. Sure there will still be some big accounts that purposely stay away from GC but we certainly won't be facing them as much as we have to face sandbaggers. No rating for matchmaking would be the best approach.

Just_grinding

@Kabam Miike @Kabam Zibiit what is wrong with matchmaking? I didn’t push hard to get paragon and a good deck to be constantly paired against other paragons. Not when you’re trying to get to the gladiator circuit. The whole point is to progress not be stuck in bronze because I’m fighting against other crazy paragon decks stronger than me. Reward the players that spent and grinded not penalize them.

Ironman3000

The "fixed" matchmaking basically forces you to use a lower roster. Really poor design.

Renaxqq

Lost so many times against paragon players that decided to do sandbagging lol.

Dragoon81

The best fix is to change how you progress, sorry but take away the X wins in a row and change it with just X wins so losing doesn’t take you back down. I’d say increase the wins needed but not have them be consecutive would make everyone’s life’s better.

IamGrO_ot

I use a 3*s only deck now. I still face most Paragons and a few TBs…but haven't faced sandbaggers in the last 9 fights. 8 wins and 1 loss 🥳

Join the 3*s only segment in BG, where skills, knowledge and tactics are what are decisive in fights...and not the wallet of the opponent.

Furrymoosen

Sandbagging is alive and well, almost worse. I honestly think the update did go through because I’ve yet to face a noticeably bigger or smaller deck regardless of if I am running max roster or dropping to max 4* and R3 5*. Decks are matching up. Unless the deck your running is full R3 6* and up, you are very likely to meet a sandbagger. Cav and lower players are going to continue to be abused by players manipulating a system that clearly isn’t fixed.

Mackey

This is truly insightful .... the only way I see this system working (VC and GC) is if they started TB/Paragon in silver 3 (for example) and UC/Cav start in bronze 3. That leaves 1 issue though ... the rewards for progressing through bronze to silver.

Matchmaking should not be on your deck strength. Not when it's so easy to change around your deck to make your life easier.

However, what it does go to show ... those people on this forum who always blert out "want the rewards that top players get? Then you got to face them" ... this is not a true statement and is clearly false in every sense

Moosetiptronic

@Furrymoosen therein lies the problem.

As a 4 or so month old paragon, I'm the meat in the grinder getting chewed up by big accounts in bronze 3 if I choose a decent 6* deck.

I'm assuming that kabams intention must be for players like me to focus exclusively on 3* rank ups for BGs or sandbag.

I.e. I can get some of the very best awards in game, by no longer trying to acquire new 6*, or rank or sig them up. I can do it with just 3* or 4* depending on where I am in game.

I'm trying to work out, if that is a good thing or not!!

Mackey

At the end of the day we are all fighting/competing for the same rewards so matchmaking should be nothing more than 2 people searching at the same time as one another. No algorithm is needed, otherwise it defeats the whole idea of having a tiered system

TheAntiSaint