**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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Fix Battlegrounds in three easy steps (that we can argue about until the end of time)
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Funny you are at work and manage to micro answer me and others.. but Zola has to wait; I really hope you are not avoiding him, cause he really is trying to see a positive side to your ideas
Any mode that allows players to avoid playing others is not a competitive mode IMO.
Except that actually ignores how difficulty is designed in EQ (and in many if not most similar games). I think there is a misconception that the way EQ is designed is with absolute parameters. The devs "believe" Uncollected should have a certain difficulty, and the content is designed to attempt to have this chosen difficulty. But that's not how difficulty is designed, at least not in the large scale. Rather, difficulty is designed relative to the playerbase. To put it in terms most would be familiar with, EQ is graded on a curve. There's a presumption that content that is appropriate to Cavalier players will have some success rate when attempted by the average Cavalier player. That success rate is not 100%. If you think Cav is too hard, it might be because they tweaked it too high this month, but then next month will be tweaked downward to compensate when they see the game data. But if you *consistently* think Cav is too hard, that's because all the other Cav players are just better than you, and the content difficulty has been tweaked for them.
To put it another way, in EQ there are also winners and losers. Its just less obvious. But no matter how tough the class is and no matter how hard the final is, someone is getting the A and someone else is getting the D. This just typically happens invisibly. It didn't happen invisibly when they completely revamped EQ.
If I understand what you're saying, I don't think this allows us to arbitrarily open the floodgates to random match making. On the one hand, it does reward players who find themselves on the lower end of an uneven match up, but it only rewards them if they win. If players consistently get matched against stronger roster players and consistently lose, that would cause a lot of frustration. But also, a super strong player that gets unlucky and matched against significantly weaker opponents will actually have to grind out a lot more wins to advance.
Typically, whenever we discuss ELO matching, we are presuming that the whole idea of using ELO is to actually find even matches - that the goal is to attempt to match players against other players with similar ELO. However, your idea does open the door to examining that assumption more closely. Here's a spitball: suppose we implement ELO but instead of matching by similar ELO we borrowed a feature from the arena. We propose to the player three possible matches: even, somewhat higher, somewhat lower. Whichever one the player picks, the game goes looking for that.
If the player picks even, the game looks for an even match. If the player asks for higher, the game looks for a stronger opponent. What if the player asks for weaker? Well, you might think that would be a kind of cheating, because we're letting the player pick a lower difficulty. But the game will only make such a match if that player *asks* for "higher." In other words, the only time a 1500 will face an 1800 is if the 1800 asks for lower and the 1500 asks for higher, so *both* players are getting exactly what they ask for. Neither side can complain.
*Now* we slap your points system on top of this. We incentivize asking for higher by rewarding more points. But you're only going to get those extra points if you can find a higher player that asks for lower. This match up is now "fair" because both players asked for it, so by definition neither side can complain. And now we are offering a high player a chance to get an easier win but for less points and we are also offering a low player a chance to get more points by picking off a higher player. We combine this with roster matching for the case where we do not yet have reliable rating for a player, so in the early stages of a season "higher" and "lower" would mean roster, and then deeper in "higher" and "lower" would mean higher and lower rating.
I can see a lot of problems with such a system, from match making density issues to psychological problems with players asking for "lower" and only running into players strong enough to ask for "higher" and still win. This is a very half-baked idea. But I think it is worth thinking about, if for no other reason than it theoretically - if it can be made to work at all - puts more agency into players hands in a way no reasonable player could complain about. It reverts to fair ELO matching if no one chooses the alternate match options, and uneven match ups only happen if both sides want it to happen. It might be completely broken, but it sounds intriguing.
Beating a Paragon gains 3 tokens
Beating a TB gains 2 tokens
Beating a UC or Cav gains 1 token
Losing is always a loss of 1 token
You could keep matchmaking as it is but reward those who are able to beat the best competition and help them progress more quickly. You also give lower accounts that get matched vs someone bigger than them a chance to really benefit from beating them.
Consider also that losses actually almost don't matter at all for Paragons who match against each other. Say I just arrived in Gold 3, and my next match is against a Paragon. If I lose, I lose nothing, because at the moment I have no trophies. If I win, I will instantly promote to G2, where I will again have no trophies. So long as I match against Paragons, I will be very rapidly propelled to Diamond 1. If you think about it, for losses to matter at all promotion would need to take at least four trophies at all levels, and realistically probably at least five or six. Which would then be doubling the trophies necessary for progress for UC and Cav players. Some of them are progressing quickly and could overcome that increase, but many other average UC and Cav players would be getting crushed by that adjustment.
Your though experiment only highlights one side of the issue. But BG is two sided. You are saying X fights DNA and the match difficulty depends on how strong DNA is. Which is true in most solo content. But in BG, when DNA fights X, X also fights DNA. There are two match difficulties DNA's view of X and X's view of DNA. The match result is the difference of these two. If X's reward must go up as DNA gets stronger, should DNA's rewards also go down in response?
You can say there are no easy matches in competition. Smaller accounts should suck it up and face the bigger ones. Which is fair. But those smaller accounts need to be compensated/incentivized for participation, I don't think the top heavy nature of BG rewards support that. Hence the every two day objective of just play 3 matches. If you open up matchmaking further, I think participation rewards will need to go up.
Huge account differences within the same title pools.
There are TB with one r3, there are TB with nearly full or full r3 decks.
There are Paragons with 3 r4s and can’t even fill a deck with r3s, and there are Paragons with full r5/r4 decks.
Title is a quite inaccurate metric of roster strength, same as is Prestige or rating.
Rather than matchmaking or anything else, the token system in VT needs to change.
65% win ratio needed to advance (in a pace that make the time/resources to rewards ratio worthy) is lethal for the mode.
At least a 50% (imo something around 40%) should be enough to progress through VT.
That would take out the frustration players feel at VT.
BGs are already in the death spiral.
Participation this season was lower.
And before someone jump in and ask from where my data is from, I’ll give the answer in advance:
GC standings used to be filled to URU3 from week2 in previous seasons, this season it got filled literally the last week.
Also, I scored less points at BGs solo event and got higher bracket rewards compared to last season.
BGs are slowly dying, and the main reason is VT.
Kabam needs to change things, not in the future, but on the upcoming season, if they want the mode to continue alive.
Else BGs will become Incursions 2.0
I agree somewhat that separating by Titles is problematic, although I considered the OP's suggestion deeply. I think it would be more punitive to Cavs than anything, along with DNA's view on it being too advantageous.
However, I do feel the need to point out that people are going to struggle when they're new to the Title either way. They're in a new pool, of sorts. It's going to happen.
From a game design perspective, there is no fundamental difference between having to defeat a defender and having to beat a BG score. Beating a defender is reducing defender health to zero before your health reaches zero. These two scenarios are mathematically congruent. I spent years analyzing and comparing game systems on this fundamental basis, but a full discussion of that would be a very wide side track.
With respect to EQ vs. BG. I don't lose a EQ quest if you can beat the defenders faster. I have played some really poor BG games, and then won those because my opponent was even more incompetent. That is the source of discontent in BG. That someone else gets to play less competent opponents. Or worse, that they are the incompetent opponents for someone else.
The difference between playing you and a bot that plays like you is that you are on the other side - either winning or losing. Make it lopsided enough and one of us will walk away. The bot doesn't have that choice.
But the primary issue is that the +1/-1 system is too punitive. The win/loss points system should be flexible enough that a repeated WLWL streak lets you move forward in VT rather than keeps you stagnant. The secondary issue is that the system doesn't recognize the difference between easy wins and tough ones. It incentivizes people to seek easy matches vs. fair matches (individual). A system which promotes some fairness in match-ups while maintaining the integrity of the broader competition is what most people would be happy about.
You want people to chose to play off against the players they are equal to. And then reward them with appropriate progress for doing so.
Everything you're mentioning are indeed things my thought experiment does not address, but deliberately so because I was referencing the converse perspective directly.
It's a complicated and big sized issue. And people are doing their best.
I appreciated and enjoyed your thoughts and responses.
So one suggestion I have that may solve the issue is a combination of a Rating System, and what we have now.
Obviously, we would start with Matches that are somewhat within our range of Rosters. Perhaps softer limits than exact Matches.
Then, as Players accumulate a certain amount of Rating Points, they are Matched within their Rating Range.
Now, this is where it gets complicated. You want higher Players to accelerate, but not so quickly that it gives a total catapult. At the same time, you want Players lower down to advance, but not so quickly they have an advantage within the system.
Each Win awards Points. Each Loss reduces Points by half. For example, UC Players win 100 per Win, but lose 50 per Loss. Cav win 200, lose 100. TB win 300, lose 150. Paragon win 400, lose 200.
Now, you also want to award skill for those winning above their "paygrade", so-to-speak. Which means Paragon won't benefit from this, but it actually closes the gap enough for it to be not as advantageous.
If an UC Player wins against a Cav, they get an extra 50 Points. If they lose, no difference. If they win against a TB, they get an extra 100. If by chance they manage to win against a Paragon, it's 150. Something that would either be rare, or "artificial".
Same goes for Cav against TB/Para, with 50 Points or 100 being the bonus.
Now, the part that I haven't worked out is whether to have the Brackets a set number, or a continual system like War Tiers.
That's one idea I was playing with, in as best terms I can articulate for now.
This is also exploitable in a weird way. Just never promote. I have alts that could have arbitrarily strong rosters by virtue of alliance rewards, but they only progress upward if I choose to run the gateway content. The sweet spot is probably for Cavalier players. A player that simply never completes Act 6 does not have a strong upward ceiling if they are in a strong alliance. The rewards they are foregoing by not promoting could be significantly offset by gaining access to higher BG rewards. Even if this is only temporary and the player eventually outgrows this, it still represents a significant reward influx until they eventually decide to go for TB/Paragon.
I was asked to provide a suggestion, and it's just one idea I was playing around with.
I'm open to anything that accommodates my main concern, which I have expressed. As long as there's a starting point that keeps people from being grossly overpowered before the results take over, I'm cool with it.
I do have concerns about people trying to take advantage of the system with any suggestion, and that's something that's a priority. What I'm not invested in is the effort to keep Players from getting the Rewards they're earning at any progress level. Not that I necessarily think that's your aim. I've just felt the need to point out how some suggestions are about more than just Rewards.
Ideally, we need a system that achieves a number of things. That it a) allows Players a reasonable start b) reflects their results and skills based on their performance c) rewards them for that appropriately as well as in tandem with their skill in the game mode d) prevents as much manipulation as possible, and e) motivates as many Players to participate as possible that are allowed to. It's the "c" aspect that seems to be the emphasized concern, but the other aspects are not arbitrary in my opinion.
Obviously perfection doesn't exist and I understand your points about sacrifice. What I don't believe is a "fair" sacrifice is the motivation and appropriate Rewards for lower Players. There's been a great deal of minimizing and distorting the issue, and I agree. It shouldn't be an easy street for lower Players to get Rewards beyond their level. Conversely, it shouldn't be something that higher Players have a way of preventing them from getting Rewards at all, just because it's a competition. Those two sacrifices are not absolute in my opinion. It's reasonable enough to want something that everyone benefits from in the way that's appropriate to where they're at, as well as their performance.
The defining factor for me is on Kabam's side on what's appropriate, not popular opinion here. Ask the majority to answer honestly, and they'd say give them as little as possible. That's not reasonable, and it doesn't mean the argument is only about the Rewards just because the point is made.
I believe that the devs are making an honest legitimate effort to try to resolve these issues. But they've also made honest legitimate efforts to solve problems in the past that I thought they were completely bonkers to attempt.
I am never as judgmental about the developers as most people around here, but I am very judgmental about their work, which is completely different. I may be rooting for Kabam as people, but I can't support a solution that Kabam hasn't actually described or released yet. It could be great (free revives was great, although I'm probably a bit biased), it could be good enough (defender diversity with attack bonuses was a good enough solution) or it can be completely dumb (their original stacking balance modifications post 12.0 were mathematically illiterate).
I get that your posted suggestion may have not been precise about details. But I think we're past the point of just throwing out ideas. Every idea has already been thrown out, if we assume all the details are completely negotiable. In fact, many suggestions aren't even suggestions, they are just directives. For example: just preserve progress while keeping match making fair and allowing a path to regain track rewards. I mean, that's great, but is there a way to do that? Is there a way to do what you're describing with numbers different from the ones you mention? It is never a safe presumption that the numbers will always work out. Some suggestions have a problem with the numbers because *no* numbers will ever work, so while the numbers are often negotiable to a point, it is important to produce an example that at least theoretically works at all, even if it is not optimal.
It needs to be appropriate for everyone. Not just grossly beneficial to a small number.
I've avoided the comparison to War for a reason. I have strong feelings about what it's become, and they're not just rooted in the lack of "Prestige Wars". I do not agree that it's a success as much as some. People have lost interest, and not just in the general sense. People that used to love War and feel motivated have lost the desire at all to play, people who have been playing the game for years. They just don't care anymore. It's become something that is more stress than it's worth, and that's not just a "Git gud." scenario for me.
Once you sacrifice that desire, it takes more than just Revs to bring it back. I won't feel confident in what it's become until that shifts and unfortunately, people don't just suddenly become interested again. That's what I've been trying to say all along. If you take their desire, they stop caring. That's a serious situation, whether Players are on the upper or lower end.
As @DNA3000 notes, outlining general principles is an armchair exercise. I can readily say what I don’t want in BGs based on what I consider undesirable outcomes. For instance, here are six *principles* I generally support (and I think most others might as well):
1. I don’t want a system that rewards newer, less developed rosters at the expense of deeper, more developed rosters.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
3. I don’t want a system that causes smaller accounts to suffer and quit any more than I want one that causes deeper, more developed accounts to quit.
4. I don’t want BGs to be the predominant and quickest way to acquire valuable materials and advance in game.
5. I don’t want BGs to unduly penalize players for rankups done to advance in other areas of the game.
6. I don’t want players to be able to manipulate matchmaking by dropping low rarity champs into their BG decks (unless they are penalized directly for doing so).
To me these seem pretty unobjectionable, but I’m sure there will always be objections. What’s hard is deciding precisely how to realize these principles in actuality. Is it ELO? Is it a modified version of silos? Is it prestige or deck-based matchmaking? Do people get seeded or a head start based on previous seasons? Do small accounts only face each other the entire season, or just for a while?
Answering those questions is the hard part. In fact, answering some of them positively may very well require you to answer others negatively—there are few perfect solutions, but always trade-offs. To date, the only person I can point to who has tried to answer those questions. @DNA3000 offered concrete suggestions—I don’t put a cent’s worth of stock in my own or anyone else’s generic armchair pronouncements.
Dr. Zola