**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.
Comments
What you're describing is exactly what happens when people advance in the game. Competitions get tighter. It's supposed to be that way. Not the inverse. Making a system that's harder for people starting out isn't how any game I can think of operates. Progress is accelerated earlier on, and slows down as you advance. Otherwise that's a broken progression model that becomes a perpetual motion machine. The more you exert, the faster it goes. No one ever progresses.
That's not the case in MCoC. MEQ and story quests are meant for progression.
I'll revert to another sports analogy as I have in the past...
The Houston Texans aren't beating the Kansas City Chiefs anytime soon....but if they want to win the superbowl, they may have to play teams like that. They may win, but they'll probably lose.
If they win enough games (matches) through the season (victory track) they make the playoffs (gladiator circuit).
Regardless, if they want to compete for that title, they have to play the opponent they're scheduled to play (matchmaking) and there's no handicap saying "Well the Texans aren't very good, so they can play the Cardinals, Colts, Bears, and Broncos. If they have a winning record we'll put them in the playoffs."
Instead, they'll play really good teams (Paragons with stacked decks) and really bad teams (newly minted Cavs). If they don't make the playoffs, hopefully they learn from their mistakes and improve for next season.
In terms of the game, just because someone with the skill of a Paragon can take a lower Account and hang doesn't mean it's just skill-based. The Roster is, has, and will always be, a reflection of the capabilities of a Player, to some extent. Rosters represent many things, besides skill. Time and energy spent in the game, milestones achieved to develop, content completed, etc. You can't say that people are entitled to use their hefty progress elsewhere in the game and still argue that Roster has no bearing in the same argument. That's hypocrisy.
We're not playing a sport. We're playing a game, and there absolutely has to be some form of reason when creating a playing field. People have no control who they match. They're trusting the system to place them in a match that IS based on skill, and not by being overpowered by various factors. The bottom line is, there IS a point where a Match is unfair. There is no skill that a mid to newer Player can possess to overcome a Match with a Paragon full of R4s (and amassing R5s). The CR alone means they're working twice as hard.
If both football teams were relatively the same size, that's fair game. If a team of an average of 160lbs. is going against an average of 250lbs., there is no chance. They go down like a sack of sand.
We should be "thankful" that we only lose a token but can stay in the tier when that happens. In most sports or even games, there comes a point in a competition where you go home. No buy backs, no do-overs, no second chance.
You talked ALOT in another thread about growing a roster, taking the time to progress and that too many people are "rushing content" then getting disgruntled when something changes and they can't do what they did yesterday, well, in BG's, this tells you where you stand against everyone else, not just those at your equivalent progression or a fixed difficulty where you can choose to go to an easier level.
You want fairness based on your roster, go do AQ or an EQ of appropriate level. Or Arena, but maybe not because eventually you'll blow the streak on a death team and thats probably not fair either.
Not everyone deserves a prize just for showing up. We're not 10 years old anymore.
Oh BTW, Congrats on becoming Paragon!
Also, I'm not Paragon. I'm TB. I'm sure you're aware of that. I wasn't aware that this was a gated conversation.
If the matchmaking treated everyone equally that wouldn't happen apart from exceptional circumstances.
I got no dog in this fight, I won't even get to GC, you know why?
Because I'm not good enough and my roster too shallow. I need to put in the work.
My mistake on the Paragon thing, I just read the thread title and made an assumption.
You asked if I would pit a bunch of 15 year olds against an NFL team...No, but those 15 year olds aren't eligible to play in the superbowl....not playing for the same prize.
Would a team full of players averaging 160lbs play against a team with players averaging 250lbs? If they're all in the NFL competing for the same prize, yes, they would.
You can see the fundamental issue here is the rewards and/or player bracketing.
If Kabam wants to make brackets for Cav players so they don't get steam rolled, that's fine. But the rewards for that bracket should be lower. Watch how fast those players lose their mind if that happened.
Heck, you could even take title progression out of it, and lock out rarities of champs similar to arenas. Have a bracket with nothing above a 4* champ, another with nothing above 5*, and another with nothing above 6*. In this way, the playing field is leveled, cause those Paragons can't show up with 6*r4 champs and plow through a young cav with his 5/65 champs.
But again, the rewards have to reflect that with their own bracket, and until that day comes, there's no reason less developed accounts should face other less developed accounts exclusively.
First fact, there are very small roster differences most of the time between smaller players, meaning a UC or 8k -9k prestige player won't usually have massive differences in their rosters, meaning when they only play each other, they will be getting pretty even matchups most the time.
However in Paragon, there's an enormous spread between rosters from a new Paragon who only has 3 or 4 r4s or who did prestige rankups for AQ or alliance needs and has a 15.8 prestige but only had a million account rating has has very little more than their top 5 high prestige pushes.
Compare those Paragon situations to a more hardcore Paragon player, or one who does competitive war and/or spends a decent amount (to Include early access bundles on new champs). This puts players that have 20+ R4s, maybe even some r5 at this point and often all of the newest champs in the game (which makes a massive difference based on how new champs have been designed).
Your trying to tell me that UC or Cav players with relatively similar rosters aren't getting an easier matchups as compared to the enormous swings in Paragon rosters and keeping in mind that lower Paragon is getting matched with the higher ones constantly and in every tier starting in bronze?
Lets look at fact #2. You don't (or very rarely) get to paragon without getting good at the game. It's safe to safe most Paragon are above average players or they wouldn't be at that level of the game. Spending alone doesn't get you to the end as some content can't be beat by money alone.
However, kabam has made this game ridiculously easy for new players which is counterproductive for them learning how to actually ay the game well. How often do we see posts how act 5 being "impossible" then you see their roster and they have r2 6 stars and lately sometimes even r3 6 stars while still trying to beat act 5!
Many Paragon like myself been playing for long time and had to learn nodes and defenders to beat act 5 with 4 stars, now they don't have to learn anything, they just muscle through with r5 5*s of op champs.like Herc or doom or kitty or lately muscle through with r2 and sometimes even r3 6*s. This is content that was literally designed for 4 star champs! How are they going to learn the game muscling through content that was designed for 4 stars when using ranked up 6 stars?
Leading to the point, there are many UC and Cav players that are just not good at the game, don't understand champs outside of the handful they use and haven't figured out identifying specific counters when needed. Which is fine, however, there are some UC and Cav players that took the time to learn the game or had worse pull luck and had to learn how to play and couldn't muscle through everything. This gives those players who learned how to play at UC and Cav insanely easier matches.
An above average UC or Cav player will very often get matched with players who haven't learned the game yet, haven't learned champ abilities and interactions and nodes well and just want to use their same regular team while doing not much more than parry and 5 hit combos with everyone.
This means an above average UC or Cav will get far easier matchups more often and will have an easy path to GC. However, being an above average players in Paragon men's nothing when going against the best of the best starting all the way in bronze. Sure you can be above average and even win more than you lose but won't progress well or fast when everyone you fight against is just as good as you (meaning it comes.down to the draft way too often).
It is impossible to deny that lower players have an easier path to progressing in BG current matchmaking system and anyone who thinks his is excluding essential facts that prove this argument otherwise.
Under normal circumstances I wouldn't care at all that weaker players are getting easier matches, but since we are all fighting for same rewards then I do care. Additionally I find it extremely unfair that there are many UC and Cav players already in GC because of these easier matchups and already with better rewards than the countless amount of TB and Paragon players who are still in victory track because of the much harder matchups path they have to take while going for same rewards as those players they would easily squash if faces head to head.
Each of those groups only fight or play against each other all season, while let's say the pros or NFL players only play against other all season.
That is 100% fair if it stays like that as you used in your analogy, however that is NOT where kabam leave it's. First of all, 15 years olds, high school kids, college kids and NFL players all compete for different rewards. High school kids trying to get college scholarships, college kids trying to get drafted and the only ones actually getting paid are the NFL pros.
Additionally the above groups you used in your analogy would never ever go against each other or compete for the same rewards.
What Kabam has done is let the "15 year olds" compete against each other all season and the high school kids compete against each other all season and the college kids compete against each other all season while going for exact same same rewards (amount of rewards given in each milestone) as the NFL pros.
To make it even weirded, Kabam then let's the best of the "15 year olds" with very weak account and the best of the other weakest groups during the regular season and promote them to compete in the NFL playoffs.
You said in your analogy football would never let kids face pros and used that as your argument, so we can agree that they would never let a great high school team compete against NFL teams in the playoffs while competing for super bowl.champsionshio, however that is exactly what Kabam is doing.
Your own analogy supported the argument of those you are disagreeing with.
For the record, I have no desire to br facing these weaker players, what I want is fairness. Since we are all fighting for same rewards we should all have the same path to the rewards, if they want to avoid massive lopsided matches, I'm fine with that but be fair about it, and don't reward weaker players with easy path to getting same rewards as far stronger players. Simply do what sports do (using your analogy) and keep the different types of players in different leagues only going against themselves while going for lower rewards.
No, they won't change it to this, because they want the bigger accounts to have constant 50:50 matches because this group (I would guess), is probably more likely to spend, it will prolong the victory track for them and increase chance of buying victory shields and elder marks which is the way this is monetized.
Remove all variable based matchmaking. Add rewards to lower tiers for the “play 3 match” objective to entice smaller accounts to participate. Big accounts move out of the lower tiers very quickly. Then only smaller accounts are left to face each other.
I tried BG on my UC account and the matchmaking takes forever. I couldn’t even do the 3 match objective because the matchmaking kept timing out and I gave up.
I think they recognized the uproar caused by sandbaggers, came up with a solution to it, and didn't consider the ramifications of the "fixed" system.
Perhaps the next attempt at a fix will get it right.
The important thing is that if you're not as strong as a player (combination of roster, skill, knowledge, etc.), there needs to be an opportunity in this game to queue up a match and quite often get someone of similar strength. If you open up the option for these players to have to face elite level Paragon players when it comes to getting the best rewards, you need to give them an option to at least forgo some of those rewards for a more competitive matchup. It doesn't need to be forced upon them but it needs to be available. And Friendlys isn't that option because of it's own requirements. Unranked could be that answer though.
@Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Porthos @Kabam Vydious @Kabam Lyra
I've asked a couple times so this time, sorry but I'm just tagging everyone that comes up on my at kabam list here.
Every time the lower players have complained or forwarded concerns about BG matchmaking I've seen Kabam mods get involved in the discussion so I'm requesting the same here. It really feels like everything in BG is being favored to weaker players even to include responses to concerns here in forums, which so far have been ignored by the mods on concerns from the end game players. I'm not saying it's intentional but it is mine, and I'm sure others, perception.
Can we please get someone from Kabam to at least acknowledge this concern, it would be greatly appreciated.
I've seen mods quickly jump on forums complaints about weaker accounts facing bigger accounts, about complaints of sand bagging, about complaints of the pause and time out that works works against lower accounts, etc. I would greatly appreciate an acknowledgement of the current situation that has been caused.to larger players based on constantly trying to adjust everything to the lower players complaints.
As @Chatterofforums mentions above, it would be useful to have some comment here.
@DNA3000 has explained on this thread and I recall at least 2 others, how prestige matchmaking is a nonsense with the current VT and GC reward structure and the paragon community is broadly united in that belief too.
If you can review this and drop in some form of reply, even if you can't acknowledge it, that would be great.
(Particularly as the usual suspect is already trying to derail the thread.)
another way to think of it:
Victory track is the regular season.
Gladiator circuit is the post-season.
Being #1 is winning the Super Bowl.
The NFL frequently allows "unworthy" teams into the post-season.
If you win your division, you can get in the post-season (even with a losing record).
Never ever has the NFL let pop warner (UC), high school (Cav) or college (TB) teams who finished well against other teams in their field go into the NFL post season to play NFL (Paragon) teams to go for the super bowl championship while getting same or better rewards than the NFL players (Paragon).
In your example, an unworthy team in the playoffs still earned their spot there by competing against the rest of the professional NFL teams, so you know example only strengths the argument many of us are saying.
It would be very interesting to see at time points throughout the season, how many people broken out my progression level reach gladiator. Ie do a higher proportion of UCs who are doing BG get there sooner than paragon
To be precise, I've never supported completely equal Matches. It just happens to be similar to that by way of whatever methods they're employing. What I have been a proponent of is soft limits to the difference between Accounts. Meaning, there shouldn't be such a variation that you have people stonewalled. You can fight to the best of your ability with the skill you have, where you're at. You have no control over coming up against a Roster that makes it highly unlikely you have a chance in hell.
VT matchmaking needs a real examination though, I took a week off after I got into the circuit so I didn’t match the likes of KT for my early points and was able to casually plough through Thronebreakers and fresh Paragons to ~80 points or so. This means that there’s a good few hundred comparatively small accounts that managed to dodge playing even medium sized paragons like me (10 R4) on their way to the GC, which I just disagree with.
They don't let non-NFL teams make the NFL playoffs.