**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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However, I can tell you a few things that might be somewhat helpful:
1. The situation should improve a bit over time, as the stronger accounts win and advance track. Those accounts should move out of bronze, and you shouldn’t have to face them in later weeks. However, there won’t be a dramatic change over time because there will still be lots of other strong accounts in bronze, they will just drop in frequency, hopefully to the point it becomes easier to string wins together.
2. If you’re the type of player with surplus units, you could consider buying victory shields. I wouldn’t spend money on them, but they are not super expensive. The key is to use them efficiently. I would wait until you have two trophies and them to try to get the third.
3. Don’t chase promotion. If you stick to trying to get the every-other-day battlegrounds objectives, those have a significant amount of rewards. Promotion has more, of course, but chasing promotion under the current system is a recipe for burn out. But taking what you can get and then stepping away will allow you to get a reasonable haul of BG rewards with far less stress. This in combination with #1 above might be the best way to survive the current iteration of the match maker until saner systems prevail.
One: prestige bands. In other words, the game separates everyone into prestige ranges and tries to match within that range. Suppose one of these ranges is 14000 to 16000 (just for purposes of discussion). A player with 14001 prestige will not match against a player with 13999 prestige even though that player is essentially an identical match, but they will match against a player with 15999 prestige because even though they are about 2000 prestige apart they are in the same band. I don’t think this is what’s happening, but it is not contradicted by the data.
Two: roster strength alternate metric. The game is computing some other number that is loosely correlated with prestige but it not actually prestige, and is matching based on that. Possibly with close match, possibly with band matching.
No other option is consistent with my observations that I can think of.
I’m 99% certain and not 100% certain because it is always possible I’ve overlooked something in this situation that would recontextualize my observations. But given the relatively straight forward (presumably) options available for a match maker, the odds of that are small.
Also, some people are using the term “prestige” to refer to roster strength in general, but I would say a not-ignorably large number are using it more literally. For example, there are people suggesting that since the match maker is (or appears to be) using prestige for matching, people should avoid prestige-significant rank ups. But if it is a broader roster strength metric that is being used, that advice would be misleading.
My experience tends to suggest the longer I wait for a match, the more likely it’s going to be someone at or below my “strength”, however that’s defined. Immediate matches have almost always been my matches against what I would consider “stronger” accounts. I cannot recall ever matching against someone with 5*’s in an immediate match, but I tend to see select 5* champs (avoid, e.g.) in a match that takes longer to find.
Perhaps that’s just my interpretation, but it seems to hold true for me.
Dr. Zola
I can't find the thread but someone with a normal 700k account came up against someone with a 900k account but he had an r5 6* and plenty of r3/r4 champs. That suggests total hero rating plays a big part. The other accounts prestige and top 30 would have been way higher.
It might be a more complicated calculation that takes into account prestige or top 30 champs as well but I'd say that definitely suggests total hero rating plays a part.
There’s a lot to consider in terms of how it all gets structured, but the punitive nature of the node seems to be one of the root causes of player dissatisfaction.
Dr. Zola
You are clearly missing the point here 🤦♂️
The medal accrual or the softening of the medal requirements would be my first priority, then the matchmaking. Or get rid of VT altogether and change the reward structure.
Knowing how vocal is @DNA3000 with the devs, it would be interesting to know the feedback from the team, how likely it is that his idea or any other in this direction will be adopted.
I wouldn’t consider it *entitlement* to think that working hard to build your roster and invest in your champs over years via all the various game modes should naturally give you an advantage in modes like BGs. With that said, if the team wants BGs to be more of a mode for developing accounts and the very tip-top accounts, that’s their choice.
Dr. Zola
Frankly, the only worrisome thing is a Kabam mod hasnt cared enough to even chip in.... once. multiple long threads with hundreds of comments, and not a SINGLE mod comment. Thats the worrisome part.
When the weaker accounts were complaining about sandbagging and then the pause and time out strategy, moderators were quick to respond and Inform the community that they were addressing the issue with the game team.
Those issues only effected the lower players and mods were quick to address them and inform community they were trying to get resolution. That's part of why this current situation is aggravating as we haven't got any such acknowledgement.
I can't help but feel and assume that they are doing what we see sometimes, which is just ignore the community in hopes people give up and stop complaining. I hope I'm wrong on my current assumption, but until I hear something different, then it's the only thing I can assume.
I understand what you are saying; but constantly catering to the lower end makes the game dull...
Dr. Zola