PLEASE FIX BATTLEGROUND MATCHMAKING

As a player with 1 r3 7* can you please stop making me fight players with 30 of them? I don't know what you want me to do. Make it a draft system with a group of characters yall pick or something. But people with small accounts can't do a damn thing against valiants that just farm the diamond ranks. Please let us pick from anything but our own decks to make it fair. Make a 2* BG. Do something.

Comments

JessieS

As a Valiant who farms the diamond and Vibranium ranks I don’t see your problem . I regularly give up so I don’t accidentally move up a rank and you get a free victory with no effort

Furrymoosen

But do you want the same rewards that those players get?

BringPopcorn

As a Valiant who farms the diamond and Vibranium ranks I don’t see your problem . I regularly give up so I don’t accidentally move up a rank and you get a free victory with no effort

You are part of the problem...

DirtyLongBeard

What is wrong with there being a draft board that we both draft from? So it doesn't matter who has more money or who's been playing longer. So every character we pick from is max 6*s so it's more fair. Hell make it all max 5*s so quake and magik can be in the draft. But there needs to be something cuz with bad match making you can honestly lose every game for a week straight.

Aleor

Actually to make it fair and competitive, 3* only bgs would be great. The problem is you don't get to monetize the game like that and the rewards for players can't have the same value.
The community could agree to use 3* only champs by itself, but then there would always be people who would happily take a win using 5* deck. Otherwise you're more or less guaranteed to reach the place where you wouldn't be able to move up

GroundedWisdom

As a Valiant who farms the diamond and Vibranium ranks I don’t see your problem . I regularly give up so I don’t accidentally move up a rank and you get a free victory with no effort

The problem is this affects the natural rhythm of progression. Players are playing and advancing based on the best of their abilities. Then they get sandbagged by an artificial wall. While it's true that they're going to hit their limit eventually, it's the competition that should determine that. Not Players pecking them off for easy Milestones.

Furrymoosen

What is wrong with there being a draft board that we both draft from? So it doesn't matter who has more money or who's been playing longer. So every character we pick from is max 6*s so it's more fair. Hell make it all max 5*s so quake and magik can be in the draft. But there needs to be something cuz with bad match making you can honestly lose every game for a week straight.

What is wrong with players being able to use the rosters they've invested their time (and possibly money) into? What is wrong with being motivated to grow your roster and invest in a wider variety of champs so that you can compete better in the future?

smdam38

Preaching to the choir.

The game is aimed at a very small group of people that will keep their lights on.

They “literally” outsourced their forum to people that are just on here all the time.
Didn’t want to hire anyone.

I think they’ve basically given up and are milking without actually touching the udders.

DNA3000

What is wrong with there being a draft board that we both draft from? So it doesn't matter who has more money or who's been playing longer. So every character we pick from is max 6*s so it's more fair. Hell make it all max 5*s so quake and magik can be in the draft. But there needs to be something cuz with bad match making you can honestly lose every game for a week straight.

Nothing is wrong with that, if that's what you want from your competition. There used to be an auto racing tournament called IROC where teams raced identical cars. The idea was to pit drivers against each other on equal footing. And it was popular among a lot of auto racing fans. So why don't all auto races use that format? Isn't it more fair?

Well yes, if you think auto racing is about who's the best driver. But it isn't. Auto racing is actually a team sport. The driver is just one team member. The pit crew are also on the team. The car designers and tuners are also on the team. It is about who puts the best overall team together, and the car is as much a product of the team as the driver. Having the best car is a legitimate component to winning the race.

So the question is, in MCOC, is roster considered part of player strength? Yes it is. Roster growth is part of the player progression. In fact, it is *literally* necessary to progress in the game. Players have every reason to expect that having a stronger roster would offer advantages in a competitive game mode. It does in AQ leaderboards. It does in AW. It even has an advantage in arena rank rewards. Why *shouldn't* it have an advantage in Battlegrounds?

If you believe Battlegrounds should be some sort of "refuge" from the rest of the game, then sure, you might think it would be better if roster played no role. But if you believe Battlegrounds should be a part of the rest of the game, that it should help you progress and then benefit from that progress, if you believe that performing well in BG should offer rewards that would then help you in BG, then roster should play a role.

There's no such thing as "bad match making." If someone else is stronger than you, whether they are more skillful or more knowledgeable or possesses a stronger roster, or all three, then they should win. That is what a fair competition is. A fair competition is one where the strongest competitiors tend to beat the weaker ones. A competition where every match up is fair is not a fair competition. It is a participation event where the strongest competitors and the weakest ones all have the exact same chance of winning - 50% - and all of them have the same chance at the best results. That's not a competition. That is a mockery of a competition.

In IROC, it was the drivers (and to an extent the pit crews) that were competing against each other, factoring out the cars. This is an explicit intent of the competition. But MCOC is not explicitly a test of how has the fastest thumbs. From day one, it tells players to grow roster and stronger roster will help you out. It tells you stronger roster will help you do content. It will help you progress. It will make you stronger when you have to compete against other players. There has to be a very good reason for Battlegrounds to abandon that entirely, and no one has ever given a good reason for that.

smdam38

That is a ridiculous wall of text.

No pay or affiliation with the company?

DNA3000

Actually to make it fair and competitive, 3* only bgs would be great. The problem is you don't get to monetize the game like that and the rewards for players can't have the same value.
The community could agree to use 3* only champs by itself, but then there would always be people who would happily take a win using 5* deck. Otherwise you're more or less guaranteed to reach the place where you wouldn't be able to move up

Separate from everything else, there's this myth that if only everyone used the same decks, or were restricted to low rarities, then BG would be more "fair." That's laughable, and not just in theory. We used to do this, or rather we did something close enough that we don't need to guess what will happen, we know what will happen.

When BG used to match by deck, a lot of players (myself included) assembled 4* decks to consistently match against players with similar strength decks. No one could have a stronger deck than me, because I had all the 4* champs and I had them more or less ranked up. So every match was at worse more or less on equal roster terms. And I never had a better win record than in those seasons, because when you factor out deck strength, what's left is deck construction (which champs are best for the meta), the bans, the drafts, and the match selections. Oh yeah, and then actually fighting the fight. Most of the time I won my matches before the fights even started, because while I am not the smartest MCOC player around, the odds of a random player knowing more than me, knowing more mechanics than I do, knowing more champion abilities than I do, knowing more match ups than I do, is very low. In a "fair fight" between me and J. Random Cavalier, I'm going to win about 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time I'm going to be matching against some veteran's alt.

It is just a weird bias that players hate losing to someone with a stronger roster, because they think they had no chance to win in the first place. But the players who were, you know, having to pick one of their last three mystics to fight my Torch say, those players were just as doomed. They had no chance to win at all. They just didn't know that, precisely because they are new and have no idea how the game works.

If it is not obvious how deck matching actually hurt the lower players, look at it from my perspective. I'm not a lower player. Right now, there's a good chance I will match against someone with a lower roster, but also a chance I might match against someone with a higher one. With deck matching, the chance to match against someone with a higher roster becomes zero. All those matches where I would have struggled, well now I am much better off. My win rate is likely to rise, and in fact it did rise when deck matching was a thing. If my win rate is going up, whose win rate is going down? Its a zero sum game. Do you think it was the players stronger than me, or weaker than me, whose win rates went downward?

Herbal_Taxman

What is wrong with there being a draft board that we both draft from? So it doesn't matter who has more money or who's been playing longer. So every character we pick from is max 6*s so it's more fair. Hell make it all max 5*s so quake and magik can be in the draft. But there needs to be something cuz with bad match making you can honestly lose every game for a week straight.
Nothing is wrong with that, if that's what you want from your competition. There used to be an auto racing tournament called IROC where teams raced identical cars. The idea was to pit drivers against each other on equal footing. And it was popular among a lot of auto racing fans. So why don't all auto races use that format? Isn't it more fair?

Well yes, if you think auto racing is about who's the best driver. But it isn't. Auto racing is actually a team sport. The driver is just one team member. The pit crew are also on the team. The car designers and tuners are also on the team. It is about who puts the best overall team together, and the car is as much a product of the team as the driver. Having the best car is a legitimate component to winning the race.

So the question is, in MCOC, is roster considered part of player strength? Yes it is. Roster growth is part of the player progression. In fact, it is *literally* necessary to progress in the game. Players have every reason to expect that having a stronger roster would offer advantages in a competitive game mode. It does in AQ leaderboards. It does in AW. It even has an advantage in arena rank rewards. Why *shouldn't* it have an advantage in Battlegrounds?

If you believe Battlegrounds should be some sort of "refuge" from the rest of the game, then sure, you might think it would be better if roster played no role. But if you believe Battlegrounds should be a part of the rest of the game, that it should help you progress and then benefit from that progress, if you believe that performing well in BG should offer rewards that would then help you in BG, then roster should play a role.

There's no such thing as "bad match making." If someone else is stronger than you, whether they are more skillful or more knowledgeable or possesses a stronger roster, or all three, then they should win. That is what a fair competition is. A fair competition is one where the strongest competitiors tend to beat the weaker ones. A competition where every match up is fair is not a fair competition. It is a participation event where the strongest competitors and the weakest ones all have the exact same chance of winning - 50% - and all of them have the same chance at the best results. That's not a competition. That is a mockery of a competition.

In IROC, it was the drivers (and to an extent the pit crews) that were competing against each other, factoring out the cars. This is an explicit intent of the competition. But MCOC is not explicitly a test of how has the fastest thumbs. From day one, it tells players to grow roster and stronger roster will help you out. It tells you stronger roster will help you do content. It will help you progress. It will make you stronger when you have to compete against other players. There has to be a very good reason for Battlegrounds to abandon that entirely, and no one has ever given a good reason for that.

IROC is an interesting analogue. And while IROC is gone, a related format — restrictor plate / tapered spacer racing — lives on as part of the regular NASCAR schedule at Daytona and Talladega. Restrictors were introduced more for safety reasons than anything else, and like IROC, they basically mean that every driver’s car at Daytona has the same performance limitations. And these are two beloved races in the nascar schedule, because they are different and they highlight different capabilities for teams (focused very heavily, as you noted, on the drivers). It also results in a unique style of racing that’s different than a typical nascar race.

My takeaway is that Kabam is on the right track by introducing variations to BGs, while still keeping “standard” BGs as the mainstay.

Double_Helix

These aren't really good solutions to the problem, but it is a real problem. Because the system encourages big accounts to hang out in low tiers and rack up easy wins, there really isn't any level at which developing players can interact with the mode without getting curb-stomped. That's a bad thing in the long term, because we want those developing players to stick around and grow. "Go away and build your roster" isn't a good message.

DNA3000

These aren't really good solutions to the problem, but it is a real problem. Because the system encourages big accounts to hang out in low tiers and rack up easy wins, there really isn't any level at which developing players can interact with the mode without getting curb-stomped. That's a bad thing in the long term, because we want those developing players to stick around and grow. "Go away and build your roster" isn't a good message.

What you are saying is literally impossible. It is impossible for a strong account to "hang out in low tiers" while "racking up easy wins" in a way that specifically disadvantages lower players. Yes, players can milestone farm in VT, but the only way to do that is to lose two matches for every one they win. That is still a useful tactic if you are milestone farming because you can use marks when you win and energy when you lose. This type of arbitrage can allow you to gain a lot of milestone points easily.

However, since you can only do this if you deliberately lose two matches for every one you win, that means every milestone farmer in VT is giving away wins. Every lower or weaker player that runs into such a player has a 67% chance of beating them by default. That is a better win percentage than they would likely achieve if they faced a straight up normal competitor. That's a better win percentage than they would have in a so-called "fair match" (50%).

Strong players can farm milestones in VT, or they can beat up weaker players in VT on their way to GC. They cannot do both. To do the former, they have to give away tons of wins to weaker players that would otherwise statistically not have won as many matches. Milestone farmers *help* weaker players progress as a side effect of trying to hover at the same VT tier. They can only stay in place if they propel other players forward.

Double_Helix

That lets lower players move up, which is adventageous in a rankings / mathematical sense, but it's really bad in terms of things like fun, gameplay, sense of accomplishment, and development as a player. A small account could spend an hour grinding BGs where every match is either (a) a forfeit that lets them move up, or (b) a lopsided match they have no hope of winning. At the end of the hour, they might be higher on the ladder than when they started, but without truly playing a competive match. They won't be better as a player, they won't be having fun, and they're unlikely to stick around long term. It's not about helping them progress on the ladder. Two of the foundations of fun, psychologically speaking, is that a match needs to have an uncertain outcome and the player needs to feel a sense that they can influence that outcome. The present situation is more of an idle game. They cue up, and let nature take its course.

As I posted in my other thread, there needs to be some mechanism that rewards players for playing at their appropriate level, and to get more points for beating higher level opponents and less for winning easy matches. You posted above about different professional racing leagues and teams needing to work together to put the best car and driver on the track... BGs is a bit more like a professional soccer team queuing up into high-school tournaments to pad their stats. If they just need wins, and it doesn't matter who it's against, why play another pro team and risk losing? There's literally only one day of the BG season where it matters what tier you're in or what your GC ranking is. The incentive structure of the scoring system and the 48-hour objectives is to "get wins" regardless of who they are against. It sabatoges the developmental ranks of the game. That's my point.

SummonerNR

That lets lower players move up, which is adventageous in a rankings / mathematical sense, but it's really bad in terms of things like fun, gameplay, sense of accomplishment, and development as a player. A small account could spend an hour grinding BGs where every match is either (a) a forfeit that lets them move up, or (b) a lopsided match they have no hope of winning. .

Just countering this, false.
If someone is “Grinding Points” (as in Solo and Ally points) by staying in lower tiers, they are *NOT* (not typically) doing so by Forfeiting. They DON'T get points if they forfeit.

So, you can play them, you can attack their defender, in at least 2 fights per match. And test your skills, try to get better (but I’m NOT making that point to say “get better”), and play the game. Even if you can’t get a KO, you are still battling.

And if opponent is farming, even though you may not get a KO, or may not even take off 50% of opponent, you are still playing, and seeing what it is like to battle higher opponents.

And even if you move up maybe higher than you ought to, it does give you higher stuff, and because others are still Farming you won’t forever be losing every match from then on.

***Unless of course, and this is probably the problem, you just outright Forfeit YOURSELF, without even trying to play. Those people are the ones that may be forever stuck in low tiers because they don’t even see if opponent may not be trying very hard.

(Note, a lot of other people may be playing “halfway” between farming and paying close attention, because they are just doing so while occupied with other stuff (watching TV, etc). But what they are doing does not affect your ability to actually play 2 Fights with your attackers against their defenders)

CesarSV7

That lets lower players move up, which is adventageous in a rankings / mathematical sense, but it's really bad in terms of things like fun, gameplay, sense of accomplishment, and development as a player. A small account could spend an hour grinding BGs where every match is either (a) a forfeit that lets them move up, or (b) a lopsided match they have no hope of winning. At the end of the hour, they might be higher on the ladder than when they started, but without truly playing a competive match. They won't be better as a player, they won't be having fun, and they're unlikely to stick around long term. It's not about helping them progress on the ladder. Two of the foundations of fun, psychologically speaking, is that a match needs to have an uncertain outcome and the player needs to feel a sense that they can influence that outcome. The present situation is more of an idle game. They cue up, and let nature take its course.

As I posted in my other thread, there needs to be some mechanism that rewards players for playing at their appropriate level, and to get more points for beating higher level opponents and less for winning easy matches. You posted above about different professional racing leagues and teams needing to work together to put the best car and driver on the track... BGs is a bit more like a professional soccer team queuing up into high-school tournaments to pad their stats. If they just need wins, and it doesn't matter who it's against, why play another pro team and risk losing? There's literally only one day of the BG season where it matters what tier you're in or what your GC ranking is. The incentive structure of the scoring system and the 48-hour objectives is to "get wins" regardless of who they are against. It sabatoges the developmental ranks of the game. That's my point.

Totally agreed, finally someone speaking my language! 💪🏻

CesarSV7

Actually to make it fair and competitive, 3* only bgs would be great. The problem is you don't get to monetize the game like that and the rewards for players can't have the same value.
The community could agree to use 3* only champs by itself, but then there would always be people who would happily take a win using 5* deck. Otherwise you're more or less guaranteed to reach the place where you wouldn't be able to move up
Separate from everything else, there's this myth that if only everyone used the same decks, or were restricted to low rarities, then BG would be more "fair." That's laughable, and not just in theory. We used to do this, or rather we did something close enough that we don't need to guess what will happen, we know what will happen.

When BG used to match by deck, a lot of players (myself included) assembled 4* decks to consistently match against players with similar strength decks. No one could have a stronger deck than me, because I had all the 4* champs and I had them more or less ranked up. So every match was at worse more or less on equal roster terms. And I never had a better win record than in those seasons, because when you factor out deck strength, what's left is deck construction (which champs are best for the meta), the bans, the drafts, and the match selections. Oh yeah, and then actually fighting the fight. Most of the time I won my matches before the fights even started, because while I am not the smartest MCOC player around, the odds of a random player knowing more than me, knowing more mechanics than I do, knowing more champion abilities than I do, knowing more match ups than I do, is very low. In a "fair fight" between me and J. Random Cavalier, I'm going to win about 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time I'm going to be matching against some veteran's alt.

It is just a weird bias that players hate losing to someone with a stronger roster, because they think they had no chance to win in the first place. But the players who were, you know, having to pick one of their last three mystics to fight my Torch say, those players were just as doomed. They had no chance to win at all. They just didn't know that, precisely because they are new and have no idea how the game works.

If it is not obvious how deck matching actually hurt the lower players, look at it from my perspective. I'm not a lower player. Right now, there's a good chance I will match against someone with a lower roster, but also a chance I might match against someone with a higher one. With deck matching, the chance to match against someone with a higher roster becomes zero. All those matches where I would have struggled, well now I am much better off. My win rate is likely to rise, and in fact it did rise when deck matching was a thing. If my win rate is going up, whose win rate is going down? Its a zero sum game. Do you think it was the players stronger than me, or weaker than me, whose win rates went downward?

Having players match by deck is not a bad idea at all.

It's bad under the wrong circumstances in which you precisely explained, having end game valiant players like yourself with better developed skill sets (knowledge being one of them), match cavalier players with 4* decks.

What if matchmaking in VT worked according to progression?

New players would have a better experience and would actually have a chance to engage with the game mode because they would be constantly competing amoungst their piers.

BringPopcorn

Dog eat dog yay

Double_Helix

Just countering this, false.
If someone is “Grinding Points” (as in Solo and Ally points) by staying in lower tiers, they are *NOT* (not typically) doing so by Forfeiting. They DON'T get points if they forfeit.

So, you can play them, you can attack their defender, in at least 2 fights per match. And test your skills, try to get better (but I’m NOT making that point to say “get better”), and play the game. Even if you can’t get a KO, you are still battling.

There are some people who farm like that to get points from losses, but it's pretty inefficient time-wise. You can forfeit two matches with energy very quickly, then get one win with marks that gives you around 8-10x the number of points you would have gotten from losing twice, but slowly.

For reference, I typically finish the season in Arcane (partially because there's little incentive to push higher), and often my trip through Diamond involves multiple insta-forfeits from accounts that would have been equal matches with me (especially Diamond II). Likewise, my trip through Uru III will be a mix of hard battles against Celestial accounts and insta-forfeits that push me up. Once I get above 50 or so rating, things stabalize and I get opponents that try. It's rare for me to see any AFK opponents unless it's a small account that gets paired against me and just wants to notch one of their three matches completed.

DNA3000

That lets lower players move up, which is adventageous in a rankings / mathematical sense, but it's really bad in terms of things like fun, gameplay, sense of accomplishment, and development as a player. A small account could spend an hour grinding BGs where every match is either (a) a forfeit that lets them move up, or (b) a lopsided match they have no hope of winning. At the end of the hour, they might be higher on the ladder than when they started, but without truly playing a competive match. They won't be better as a player, they won't be having fun, and they're unlikely to stick around long term. It's not about helping them progress on the ladder. Two of the foundations of fun, psychologically speaking, is that a match needs to have an uncertain outcome and the player needs to feel a sense that they can influence that outcome. The present situation is more of an idle game. They cue up, and let nature take its course.

As I posted in my other thread, there needs to be some mechanism that rewards players for playing at their appropriate level, and to get more points for beating higher level opponents and less for winning easy matches. You posted above about different professional racing leagues and teams needing to work together to put the best car and driver on the track... BGs is a bit more like a professional soccer team queuing up into high-school tournaments to pad their stats. If they just need wins, and it doesn't matter who it's against, why play another pro team and risk losing? There's literally only one day of the BG season where it matters what tier you're in or what your GC ranking is. The incentive structure of the scoring system and the 48-hour objectives is to "get wins" regardless of who they are against. It sabatoges the developmental ranks of the game. That's my point.

VT incentives are a completely separate subject from VT match making. The reward structure for VT has been an unstable compromise from the beginning, trying to balance the participation elements of VT from the competitive requirements of VT leading into GC. Much of that tension has been seen through the evolution of VT: look at the changes to (medal) scoring, match making itself, and even the most recent changes to rewards. Many of the pressures placed on Battlegrounds come from conflicting priorities that have to be balanced, because one cannot simply wipe out the other. There's a desire for BG to not become a purely grinding mode like arena. But there's also a desire to encourage significant participation, because match making and VT progression doesn't work unless there are a lot of players playing a lot of matches. Most incentives to participation are going to have some element of also encouraging grinding, which makes these two requirements mutually exclusive to a degree, and balancing between them non-trivial.

We have the same tension between VT and GC. VT is more focused on participation, while GC is more pure competition. VT has rewards for progress, GC has rewards for final rank. But since promoting through VT is the prerequisite for entry to GC, there has to be some transition from participation focus to competitive focus, or it becomes too easy to enter (and then claim rewards from) GC. That too has been tinkered with a lot, so that progress through VT is as smooth as possible for players looking to participate, but still eventually places downward pressure on players so they don't just all enter GC. We see them trying to address that stuff now, with things like more GC ranks (right now there's that ridiculous Uru3 bracket with half the GC players just parked in it), and we've seen that with changes like the S19 changes to tier structure.

Kabam has even hinted at downstream changes designed to address things like lopsided match making early in the season and lack of participation until the end of the season with things like ratings decay (so players play more continuously) and experiments in different ways to seed players. These are all things designed to indirectly affect who gets matched against who by having VT better represent relative player strength in VT tiers. But it doesn't change a fundamental fact that at some point, players MUST run into stronger competition if they wish to rise to higher tiers of BG (VT or GC). And at some point if a player wants to promote but doesn't want to face stronger competition to promote, there's nothing we can do for those players. It can be made smoother, with less abrupt changes in match strength. It can be made less disruptive between seasons. But the one thing it cannot be, no matter how "unfun" it is, is something that protects players from stronger competition. However it happens, it has to happen eventually.

To put it another way, not everyone is supposed to reach GC. Even Kabam has stated this directly. Any system where all the players think all they have to do is XYZ and they'll make it is a broken system by definition. Now, just that, on its face, without even specifying the specifics, is "unfun" to a lot of players. BG is not meant for them.

BringPopcorn

Said it since day 1...
Putting all progression levels in BGs is really dumb
Should have at least capped their progression in the ladder.

Double_Helix

@DNA3000 I think it's fine for players to eventually hit a wall and to not be able to progress until they get stronger. That's natural and healthy. I would argue, though, that it's not helpful to separate VT Incentives from Matchmaking, because the incentives dictate progression behavior and the progression behavior heavily influences matchmaking. There's mechanics to push people up, but there's no incentive for them to do so, and so they actively fight it to maintain easier matches. Kabam said in their big post that they built the system assuming people would want to try and win, yet there's clearly strategies built around intentionally losing (and has been since the first beta).

I'd also argue that the GC suffers from similar incentive issues that prevent it from being truly competitive. There's a lot of farming in Uru III until the last week, for example, because there's no reason to be higher.

Kabam's moving in the right direction, and I do think the VT will improve some if they introduce milestones that reward people for hitting GC earlier. That creates space for small accounts to play each other and grow until they hit that wall each season. In my opinion, however, what they've proposed is more of a bandaid solution that makes your tier / rating matter on 4 days per month instead of just 1. People can farm for 5-6 days, quickly climb to GC, then farm Uru for the rest of the season while occaionally climbing to hit a specific ratings milestone. What BGs needs is an incentive to play each match at an appropriate level so that the people under you can play at their appropriate level and the whole community develops. A rising tide lifts all summoners, or something.

BringPopcorn

@DNA3000 I think it's fine for players to eventually hit a wall and to not be able to progress until they get stronger. That's natural and healthy. I would argue, though, that it's not helpful to separate VT Incentives from Matchmaking, because the incentives dictate progression behavior and the progression behavior heavily influences matchmaking. There's mechanics to push people up, but there's no incentive for them to do so, and so they actively fight it to maintain easier matches. Kabam said in their big post that they built the system assuming people would want to try and win, yet there's clearly strategies built around intentionally losing (and has been since the first beta).

I'd also argue that the GC suffers from similar incentive issues that prevent it from being truly competitive. There's a lot of farming in Uru III until the last week, for example, because there's no reason to be higher.

Kabam's moving in the right direction, and I do think the VT will improve some if they introduce milestones that reward people for hitting GC earlier. That creates space for small accounts to play each other and grow until they hit that wall each season. In my opinion, however, what they've proposed is more of a bandaid solution that makes your tier / rating matter on 4 days per month instead of just 1. People can farm for 5-6 days, quickly climb to GC, then farm Uru for the rest of the season while occaionally climbing to hit a specific ratings milestone. What BGs needs is an incentive to play each match at an appropriate level so that the people under you can play at their appropriate level and the whole community develops. A rising tide lifts all summoners, or something.

Incentives are gonna have to be HUGE, and I don't think they are prepared to do that, or even the reward budget will allow it

Gentsy12

Actually to make it fair and competitive, 3* only bgs would be great. The problem is you don't get to monetize the game like that and the rewards for players can't have the same value.
The community could agree to use 3* only champs by itself, but then there would always be people who would happily take a win using 5* deck. Otherwise you're more or less guaranteed to reach the place where you wouldn't be able to move up
Separate from everything else, there's this myth that if only everyone used the same decks, or were restricted to low rarities, then BG would be more "fair." That's laughable, and not just in theory. We used to do this, or rather we did something close enough that we don't need to guess what will happen, we know what will happen.

When BG used to match by deck, a lot of players (myself included) assembled 4* decks to consistently match against players with similar strength decks. No one could have a stronger deck than me, because I had all the 4* champs and I had them more or less ranked up. So every match was at worse more or less on equal roster terms. And I never had a better win record than in those seasons, because when you factor out deck strength, what's left is deck construction (which champs are best for the meta), the bans, the drafts, and the match selections. Oh yeah, and then actually fighting the fight. Most of the time I won my matches before the fights even started, because while I am not the smartest MCOC player around, the odds of a random player knowing more than me, knowing more mechanics than I do, knowing more champion abilities than I do, knowing more match ups than I do, is very low. In a "fair fight" between me and J. Random Cavalier, I'm going to win about 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time I'm going to be matching against some veteran's alt.

It is just a weird bias that players hate losing to someone with a stronger roster, because they think they had no chance to win in the first place. But the players who were, you know, having to pick one of their last three mystics to fight my Torch say, those players were just as doomed. They had no chance to win at all. They just didn't know that, precisely because they are new and have no idea how the game works.

If it is not obvious how deck matching actually hurt the lower players, look at it from my perspective. I'm not a lower player. Right now, there's a good chance I will match against someone with a lower roster, but also a chance I might match against someone with a higher one. With deck matching, the chance to match against someone with a higher roster becomes zero. All those matches where I would have struggled, well now I am much better off. My win rate is likely to rise, and in fact it did rise when deck matching was a thing. If my win rate is going up, whose win rate is going down? Its a zero sum game. Do you think it was the players stronger than me, or weaker than me, whose win rates went downward?
Having players match by deck is not a bad idea at all.

It's bad under the wrong circumstances in which you precisely explained, having end game valiant players like yourself with better developed skill sets (knowledge being one of them), match cavalier players with 4* decks.

What if matchmaking in VT worked according to progression?

New players would have a better experience and would actually have a chance to engage with the game mode because they would be constantly competing amoungst their piers.

The only logical way this would work is to have different rewards. If you’re only going to match valiant with valiant and tb with tb and cav with cav, that’s a decision but don’t give a player who fully progresses through cav VT the same rewards as a valiant player that progresses through valiant VT.

CesarSV7

This false idea of

That lets lower players move up, which is adventageous in a rankings / mathematical sense, but it's really bad in terms of things like fun, gameplay, sense of accomplishment, and development as a player. A small account could spend an hour grinding BGs where every match is either (a) a forfeit that lets them move up, or (b) a lopsided match they have no hope of winning. At the end of the hour, they might be higher on the ladder than when they started, but without truly playing a competive match. They won't be better as a player, they won't be having fun, and they're unlikely to stick around long term. It's not about helping them progress on the ladder. Two of the foundations of fun, psychologically speaking, is that a match needs to have an uncertain outcome and the player needs to feel a sense that they can influence that outcome. The present situation is more of an idle game. They cue up, and let nature take its course.

As I posted in my other thread, there needs to be some mechanism that rewards players for playing at their appropriate level, and to get more points for beating higher level opponents and less for winning easy matches. You posted above about different professional racing leagues and teams needing to work together to put the best car and driver on the track... BGs is a bit more like a professional soccer team queuing up into high-school tournaments to pad their stats. If they just need wins, and it doesn't matter who it's against, why play another pro team and risk losing? There's literally only one day of the BG season where it matters what tier you're in or what your GC ranking is. The incentive structure of the scoring system and the 48-hour objectives is to "get wins" regardless of who they are against. It sabatoges the developmental ranks of the game. That's my point.
VT incentives are a completely separate subject from VT match making. The reward structure for VT has been an unstable compromise from the beginning, trying to balance the participation elements of VT from the competitive requirements of VT leading into GC. Much of that tension has been seen through the evolution of VT: look at the changes to (medal) scoring, match making itself, and even the most recent changes to rewards. Many of the pressures placed on Battlegrounds come from conflicting priorities that have to be balanced, because one cannot simply wipe out the other. There's a desire for BG to not become a purely grinding mode like arena. But there's also a desire to encourage significant participation, because match making and VT progression doesn't work unless there are a lot of players playing a lot of matches. Most incentives to participation are going to have some element of also encouraging grinding, which makes these two requirements mutually exclusive to a degree, and balancing between them non-trivial.

We have the same tension between VT and GC. VT is more focused on participation, while GC is more pure competition. VT has rewards for progress, GC has rewards for final rank. But since promoting through VT is the prerequisite for entry to GC, there has to be some transition from participation focus to competitive focus, or it becomes too easy to enter (and then claim rewards from) GC. That too has been tinkered with a lot, so that progress through VT is as smooth as possible for players looking to participate, but still eventually places downward pressure on players so they don't just all enter GC. We see them trying to address that stuff now, with things like more GC ranks (right now there's that ridiculous Uru3 bracket with half the GC players just parked in it), and we've seen that with changes like the S19 changes to tier structure.

Kabam has even hinted at downstream changes designed to address things like lopsided match making early in the season and lack of participation until the end of the season with things like ratings decay (so players play more continuously) and experiments in different ways to seed players. These are all things designed to indirectly affect who gets matched against who by having VT better represent relative player strength in VT tiers. But it doesn't change a fundamental fact that at some point, players MUST run into stronger competition if they wish to rise to higher tiers of BG (VT or GC). And at some point if a player wants to promote but doesn't want to face stronger competition to promote, there's nothing we can do for those players. It can be made smoother, with less abrupt changes in match strength. It can be made less disruptive between seasons. But the one thing it cannot be, no matter how "unfun" it is, is something that protects players from stronger competition. However it happens, it has to happen eventually.

To put it another way, not everyone is supposed to reach GC. Even Kabam has stated this directly. Any system where all the players think all they have to do is XYZ and they'll make it is a broken system by definition. Now, just that, on its face, without even specifying the specifics, is "unfun" to a lot of players. BG is not meant for them.

VT incentives and matchmaking should be thought as two combined aspects during a learning curve which are affected by experience. You can't expect a player to want to engage competition if they don't develope the desire to compete in the first place because they are being "bullied" while playing the mode.

I will put it this way, you can't expect a new born (cavalier) to understand how to run (compete) if they don't go through the learning curve of crawling and walking first (enjoy the process). You have to let the new born experience gravity and develope their physical capabilities (face their piers) in order for them to learn how to run (compete). Not everyone is supposed to compete in athletics (reach GC), but they can at the very least run at their own pace (enjoy VT).

The current VT design structure is punishing players for trying to develope that learning curve. What's important during this phase is not what they accomplish (milestones), it's how they accomplish them (by not playing).

CesarSV7

Actually to make it fair and competitive, 3* only bgs would be great. The problem is you don't get to monetize the game like that and the rewards for players can't have the same value.
The community could agree to use 3* only champs by itself, but then there would always be people who would happily take a win using 5* deck. Otherwise you're more or less guaranteed to reach the place where you wouldn't be able to move up
Separate from everything else, there's this myth that if only everyone used the same decks, or were restricted to low rarities, then BG would be more "fair." That's laughable, and not just in theory. We used to do this, or rather we did something close enough that we don't need to guess what will happen, we know what will happen.

When BG used to match by deck, a lot of players (myself included) assembled 4* decks to consistently match against players with similar strength decks. No one could have a stronger deck than me, because I had all the 4* champs and I had them more or less ranked up. So every match was at worse more or less on equal roster terms. And I never had a better win record than in those seasons, because when you factor out deck strength, what's left is deck construction (which champs are best for the meta), the bans, the drafts, and the match selections. Oh yeah, and then actually fighting the fight. Most of the time I won my matches before the fights even started, because while I am not the smartest MCOC player around, the odds of a random player knowing more than me, knowing more mechanics than I do, knowing more champion abilities than I do, knowing more match ups than I do, is very low. In a "fair fight" between me and J. Random Cavalier, I'm going to win about 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time I'm going to be matching against some veteran's alt.

It is just a weird bias that players hate losing to someone with a stronger roster, because they think they had no chance to win in the first place. But the players who were, you know, having to pick one of their last three mystics to fight my Torch say, those players were just as doomed. They had no chance to win at all. They just didn't know that, precisely because they are new and have no idea how the game works.

If it is not obvious how deck matching actually hurt the lower players, look at it from my perspective. I'm not a lower player. Right now, there's a good chance I will match against someone with a lower roster, but also a chance I might match against someone with a higher one. With deck matching, the chance to match against someone with a higher roster becomes zero. All those matches where I would have struggled, well now I am much better off. My win rate is likely to rise, and in fact it did rise when deck matching was a thing. If my win rate is going up, whose win rate is going down? Its a zero sum game. Do you think it was the players stronger than me, or weaker than me, whose win rates went downward?
Having players match by deck is not a bad idea at all.

It's bad under the wrong circumstances in which you precisely explained, having end game valiant players like yourself with better developed skill sets (knowledge being one of them), match cavalier players with 4* decks.

What if matchmaking in VT worked according to progression?

New players would have a better experience and would actually have a chance to engage with the game mode because they would be constantly competing amoungst their piers.
The only logical way this would work is to have different rewards. If you’re only going to match valiant with valiant and tb with tb and cav with cav, that’s a decision but don’t give a player who fully progresses through cav VT the same rewards as a valiant player that progresses through valiant VT.

Every milestone reward should be progression based and since there has to be a challenge factor in VT, I even proposed the following matchmaking brackets:

1. Uncollected - Cavalier
2. Cavalier - Thronbreaker
3. Thronbreaker - Paragon
4. Paragon - Valiant

Progression based players are already fractionalized, new valiants don't have nearly as much experience or knowledge than an end game valiant. No wonder cavalier players simply don't want to play the mode at all.

It's like if a Silver alliance had to match a Masters alliance, why would they even try to play that war?

Aleor

Actually to make it fair and competitive, 3* only bgs would be great. The problem is you don't get to monetize the game like that and the rewards for players can't have the same value.
The community could agree to use 3* only champs by itself, but then there would always be people who would happily take a win using 5* deck. Otherwise you're more or less guaranteed to reach the place where you wouldn't be able to move up
Separate from everything else, there's this myth that if only everyone used the same decks, or were restricted to low rarities, then BG would be more "fair." That's laughable, and not just in theory. We used to do this, or rather we did something close enough that we don't need to guess what will happen, we know what will happen.

When BG used to match by deck, a lot of players (myself included) assembled 4* decks to consistently match against players with similar strength decks. No one could have a stronger deck than me, because I had all the 4* champs and I had them more or less ranked up. So every match was at worse more or less on equal roster terms. And I never had a better win record than in those seasons, because when you factor out deck strength, what's left is deck construction (which champs are best for the meta), the bans, the drafts, and the match selections. Oh yeah, and then actually fighting the fight. Most of the time I won my matches before the fights even started, because while I am not the smartest MCOC player around, the odds of a random player knowing more than me, knowing more mechanics than I do, knowing more champion abilities than I do, knowing more match ups than I do, is very low. In a "fair fight" between me and J. Random Cavalier, I'm going to win about 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time I'm going to be matching against some veteran's alt.

It is just a weird bias that players hate losing to someone with a stronger roster, because they think they had no chance to win in the first place. But the players who were, you know, having to pick one of their last three mystics to fight my Torch say, those players were just as doomed. They had no chance to win at all. They just didn't know that, precisely because they are new and have no idea how the game works.

If it is not obvious how deck matching actually hurt the lower players, look at it from my perspective. I'm not a lower player. Right now, there's a good chance I will match against someone with a lower roster, but also a chance I might match against someone with a higher one. With deck matching, the chance to match against someone with a higher roster becomes zero. All those matches where I would have struggled, well now I am much better off. My win rate is likely to rise, and in fact it did rise when deck matching was a thing. If my win rate is going up, whose win rate is going down? Its a zero sum game. Do you think it was the players stronger than me, or weaker than me, whose win rates went downward?

I'm not in favor of deck matching, it is actually the worst after prestige matching. The limitation on lower stars would just set people in more equal starting position. If people want skills competition, it's the best you can do on this game, like real fighting games do. Yes, there are genetics, age and other reasons why your opponent may have better reaction or whatever, but matching uneven rosters is like fighting with your hands tied vs professional fighter. But again, I did point out it's not in kabams interests. As for your experience with 4* deck — would using 7* r3s help your opponents? And more importantly, do you see many people making many bad game decisions when it comes to experienced players?

CesarSV7

@DNA3000 I think it's fine for players to eventually hit a wall and to not be able to progress until they get stronger. That's natural and healthy. I would argue, though, that it's not helpful to separate VT Incentives from Matchmaking, because the incentives dictate progression behavior and the progression behavior heavily influences matchmaking. There's mechanics to push people up, but there's no incentive for them to do so, and so they actively fight it to maintain easier matches. Kabam said in their big post that they built the system assuming people would want to try and win, yet there's clearly strategies built around intentionally losing (and has been since the first beta).

I'd also argue that the GC suffers from similar incentive issues that prevent it from being truly competitive. There's a lot of farming in Uru III until the last week, for example, because there's no reason to be higher.

Kabam's moving in the right direction, and I do think the VT will improve some if they introduce milestones that reward people for hitting GC earlier. That creates space for small accounts to play each other and grow until they hit that wall each season. In my opinion, however, what they've proposed is more of a bandaid solution that makes your tier / rating matter on 4 days per month instead of just 1. People can farm for 5-6 days, quickly climb to GC, then farm Uru for the rest of the season while occaionally climbing to hit a specific ratings milestone. What BGs needs is an incentive to play each match at an appropriate level so that the people under you can play at their appropriate level and the whole community develops. A rising tide lifts all summoners, or something.

I also explained this bad approach towards solutions on the Dev Diary post bro, they are not focusing on solving the problem only alleviating the consequence. Problems will persist.

This "incentivation" for players to reach GC during 1st, 2nd, and 3rd week is nearly nothing. As long as alliance rank have better rewards than those incentives (Which they should in the first place), it's going to be a matter of perspective and decision.

Is it going to be worth not gaining a 7* champ over a t7b class catalyst? Of course it will because the catalyst is the chase item and you can pull a dud from that 7* crystal and get that resource anywhere else in game anyways.

Even if players do decide to go for that 7* crystal, they can reach 100 or 200 point mark at any given moment and simply fall back to Uru lll to keep farming and push back during last week for solo rank rewards.

Buttehrs

As a Valiant who farms the diamond and Vibranium ranks I don’t see your problem . I regularly give up so I don’t accidentally move up a rank and you get a free victory with no effort

It goes against the spirit of the mode. Also, say your scared to fight better accounts without saying your scared.