Battleground matchmaking

Is this not a competition? What does earning your stripes have anything to do with?

Is this not a competition? What does earning your stripes have anything to do with?

If it was a competition there would be no shelter and losses would punish you.
You talked about big accounts tanking matches, there is an easy solution for that, punishing losses; but you wouldn't be happy if losing a match would drop you from Gold to Silver would you?

Not everyone wants that, and it's dismissive to imply that. Some Players want that. Most want something they have a decent chance at competing in. Not a "Git gud." setup that is staked before they even try because just like AW and AQ, people take the same placements they take every Season, and no one else progresses over time. The entitlement comes from all sides. The Top feel entitled to rank higher and squash lower Players because they've "put the time and effort in", and the bottom feels entitled because the Matchmaking system is placing them in Matches they can't win. The thing about true compromise is it can't make everyone happy, but it shouldn't be 90/10.

Some players do not want to compete. That is a known issue in online gaming, and that's fine. However, BG is one mode among many in MCOC. 90% of this game has little to no competition, and zero head to head competition. It is important to frame any "compromise" around the fact that when we compromise the design of the one single player PvP game mode to soften the competition, we aren't also compromising by adding head to head competition everywhere else. If we were deciding on adding competitive elements everywhere then sure, let's try to make sure everyone gets their 50/50 balance. But when the game is already tilted 90/10 away from head to head competition, and the devs decide to spend time and energy to add a head to head competitive mode, the primary goal should be to protect the integrity of that game mode's competitive elements. Because otherwise why bother at all.

If you don't like BG and don't want to compete, don't play it. This is a perfectly valid statement when we're talking about a game mode explicitly designed to appeal to a specific kind of playstyle. Yes, we should try to minimize barriers to entry, and yes we should try to give players an opportunity to warm to it, but not at the expense of eliminating the only reason it exists in the first place: to give players who want that experience a place to get it.

Something for everyone, not everything for someone. If it is too much to ask to let the head to head competitive game mode keep its head to head competitive flavor because the players that don't want that must have everything be for them, then maybe we should start looking at the things those players like that we can find a majority of players to dislike, like challenge content, like arena, like AQ, like higher tier EQ, like repetitive side quests. Maybe we should just find the one guy that likes to do one duel a day and design the game around him.

That's hyperbole of course, because the devs wouldn't do that, because that would be dumb. Just as taking all the time and effort they put into making a head to head competitive mode and neutering the head to head competitive parts because it makes some players sad. I could have told them that would happen before they wasted all that time and money building the mode. It happens in every online game that retrofits PvP. There's a whole chapter in the handbook of game design with the Loki emote on the first page and a definition of teabagging quoted at the bottom.

If you can't handle making the players who dislike head to head competition sad, you have no business designing PvP game modes in online games. And I'm saying that on a forum where the people who designed it are likely going to read it, and have every opportunity to tell me directly that I'm full of it if they choose.

People are complaining that a Paragon is stuck fighting other Paragons in Gold (which I get first-hand), and arguing that a UC and Cav Player should be facing them. The irony of that is not lost.

This is ironic in the same sense everything else in the Alanis Morissette song Ironic is ironic.

Paragons are not asking for the game to hand them easy matches to win. Paragons (some of them) are asking for everyone to have to face everyone else. Paragons do not expect to face UC after UC after UC. They expect to face everyone, UCs, Cavs, TBs, Paragons, and stronger Paragons. And they expect everyone else to expect the same.

I don't care if those UC players ever face me. I don't even care if they ever face other Paragons like me. But those UC players should face stronger UC players. They should face Cavs. They should face the strong Cavs. They should face the TBs. They should only face me if they face those others first. But they don't face any of us. Until they get to P2, then act surprised when they discover that players higher than UC actually exist.

Is this not a competition? What does earning your stripes have anything to do with?
If it was a competition there would be no shelter and losses would punish you.
You talked about big accounts tanking matches, there is an easy solution for that, punishing losses; but you wouldn't be happy if losing a match would drop you from Gold to Silver would you?

That wouldn't change a thing. They'd still farm Rewards just as easily and then ascend when they're ready to make a run-through.
There is no system that I feel is justified that involves higher Players taking advantage of lower Players by manipulating the system. None.
That's what we have everytime. People feel entitled to play the Tiers like a xylophone, and in War it became an ultimatum because certain Alliances were creating dummy Allies to take out lower Alliances just because they never came up against them. Now we have a system that starts Alliances in Tier 20, and can come up against any variation as long as the War Rating is similar.
I'm not staying quiet on this one. There has to be some way of making it a reasonable start for people. Call it what you want. I'm not in favor of allowing people to be bashed about Bronze over and over and told to suck it up.

People are complaining that a Paragon is stuck fighting other Paragons in Gold (which I get first-hand), and arguing that a UC and Cav Player should be facing them. The irony of that is not lost.
This is ironic in the same sense everything else in the Alanis Morissette song Ironic is ironic.

Paragons are not asking for the game to hand them easy matches to win. Paragons (some of them) are asking for everyone to have to face everyone else. Paragons do not expect to face UC after UC after UC. They expect to face everyone, UCs, Cavs, TBs, Paragons, and stronger Paragons. And they expect everyone else to expect the same.

I don't care if those UC players ever face me. I don't even care if they ever face other Paragons like me. But those UC players should face stronger UC players. They should face Cavs. They should face the strong Cavs. They should face the TBs. They should only face me if they face those others first. But they don't face any of us. Until they get to P2, then act surprised when they discover that players higher than UC actually exist.

Rain on your wedding day is not ironic 😑, its poor planning.

Is this not a competition? What does earning your stripes have anything to do with?
If it was a competition there would be no shelter and losses would punish you.
You talked about big accounts tanking matches, there is an easy solution for that, punishing losses; but you wouldn't be happy if losing a match would drop you from Gold to Silver would you?
That wouldn't change a thing. They'd still farm Rewards just as easily and then ascend when they're ready to make a run-through.
There is no system that I feel is justified that involves higher Players taking advantage of lower Players by manipulating the system. None.
That's what we have everytime. People feel entitled to play the Tiers like a xylophone, and in War it became an ultimatum because certain Alliances were creating dummy Allies to take out lower Alliances just because they never came up against them. Now we have a system that starts Alliances in Tier 20, and can come up against any variation as long as the War Rating is similar.
I'm not staying quiet on this one. There has to be some way of making it a reasonable start for people. Call it what you want. I'm not in favor of allowing people to be bashed about Bronze over and over and told to suck it up.

See there is your problem, you feel as bigger accounts want to intentionally hurt smaller people, just make their life miserable and their sole objective is to "take advantage of them", Big Paragon bad bad boooo...
Nobody is asking for a pass to bully people.

Do not patronize me.

Do not patronize me.

Don't allow yourself to be patronized, seeding is active. I have a fairly decent account and there are accounts bigger than mine that are seeded at Plat1, we don't get to "bully people" or "take advantage"
Such a funny guy you are, you accuse people of having intentions to take advantage of lower accounts; but I am patronizing you.
I think its pretty insulting to tell people that they want to take advantage of others. You should be more respectful and less ignorant.

Don't allow yourself to be patronized? The denial is real.

ItsClobberinTime

Can you all just stop replying to GW? He's been ignoring everyone else's replies for hours cause he's not interested in arguing about BGs, he's interested in arguing with one person for the sake of arguing lol

Don't allow yourself to be patronized? The denial is real.

Stop being disrespectful and ignorant towards people with bigger accounts. They don't want to take advantage of anyone, they just want to compete and get less rewards than UC/Cavs who get propelled to Plat2 on day 2 while they suffer in Gold tiers.

Can you all just stop replying to GW? He's been ignoring everyone else's replies for hours cause he's not interested in arguing about BGs, he's interested in arguing with one person for the sake of arguing lol

Just cause you asked nicely. 😤

Manup456

What I do if I don’t have any wins in the current rank I’m in when matched against the credit card warriors is forfeit so they can keep it moving into GC and it only cost me a few energy instead of my time and effort since that’s more valuable. Once I get into GC I get my 1 win and wash my hands with BGs until the next season.

Can you all just stop replying to GW? He's been ignoring everyone else's replies for hours cause he's not interested in arguing about BGs, he's interested in arguing with one person for the sake of arguing lol

Not sure what you're talking about. I've been discussing them all along.

unknown

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unknown

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My account is qt the bottom how am i getting matched to a kabam devolper who is paragon 4 mill rating compaird to my just a mill team this is not a fair match up madness a kabam devopler pleasse dont tell me ik the onky one who has had a match up like this im only cavailer
Battleground is designed for the players who play mcoc for 8 9 years.

First with 10k prestige you shouldn't hope to get to gc even in a fair game.

2ndly it's mcoc even if you reach 15k prestige and have a 2 million paragon acc don't hope things will get easy on battleground, just because you grinded from 10k to 15k prestige (which will take min a year if you are not 24hr into mcoc). Then you will match with 6 million 5 million accs with 19k prestige, specially when you need one more token to progress to the next tier in Victory track.

So yeah battleground is made for those who are playing since 7 8 years, who have already beyond comparable rosters, and you will probably never even match their roster strength despite how much you play. Not only battleground everything is designed in mcoc targeting that type of players. No new players will ever play mcoc for more than 2 3 months.

Counterpoint one: I got this deck into GC in season eight.

Counterpoint two: a player starting today could easily surpass the strength of that account in just a few months.

And a suggestion arguing in forum is a waste of time, they have guardians to defend for. Just give reviews on play store or app store whatever and move on.

You went to all the trouble to make an account on the forums, just to tell people it is a waste of time discussing things on the forums.

Now see: that's ironic. It is not hard when you put enough effort into it.

Stature

WTF do they keep letting these players into Plat so easily?
Maybe they should just make the game mode for Paragon players.
That'll teach him to complain about fairness. 😆

But in all honesty, the only way to lower the amount matchmaking complaints like these is like you said, paragon only. Or have 2 separate battlegrounds with 2 separate rankings and 2 largely different set of rewards.

But I still see the lower bracket complaining about why the paragon bracket gets better rewards. So, IDK.
Rewards have always been different. Only Paragons have access to Paragon store in BG which accounts for the bulk of the rewards. @Ironman3000 and @DNA3000 conveniently ignore this, because it doesn't fit their competition narrative. No real world competition has differential rewards based on the player's status outside the competition.

Just like the game economy requires rewards to be gated, player experience and participation requires some compromise on matchmaking. It is not that they don't understand this, they just don't like to acknowledge this because it doesn't fit with their view on the game mode.
You're conveniently ignoring:

1. I've actually directly addressed this multiple times. Including in direct replies to you. For example, the discussion thread that includes this post: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2316123/#Comment_2316123 among several other places one can search for if they want.

2. You're wrong about real world competition as well. In Battlegrounds, the currency is the same, but the value of that currency differs to the competitors because of the avenues they have to spend it. This is an effect that does in fact happen in real world competitions. Most global competitions with cash prizes denominate that prize in a single currency, Euros, say. However, the value of that prize can have radically different magnitude depending on the home country of the competitors. Someone who wins a million dollars in a contest and goes home to the Philippines is likely to have a much different experience spending that prize than someone who goes back home to Switzerland.

3. Not only am I aware of the need for participation compromises for Battlegrounds, to the best of my knowledge I was the first one to bring it up, both in the original closed beta, again in the open beta, and after the game mode launched. I enshrined it as a foundational principle in my Battlegrounds Manifesto. The problem isn't that some players want a compromise and the game refuses to give it to them. The problem is they want the mode to hand them a neutered competitive environment that would be ludicrous to give to them. If you just want to fight hand-picked enemies calculated to be approximately your strength, grind arena.

1. I've also addressed that position of yours directly, in that very thread too. You use relative metrics to evaluate rewards and absolute metrics to evaluate matches. That is not how competitions work. If you are of the view that pitting 10K accounts against 20K account is necessary to maintain the purity of the competition, then you cannot hide behind the "but economy" argument to not allow the 10K account access to the same rewards the 20K account has (in the same competition).

2. You are creating a false equivalency which I have not argued for. Your example of global competitions would be valid if there were extreme restrictions on how the prize money could be spent. Such as if the winner of say, Wimbledon, was banned from ever buying tennis shoes or better racquets and was forced to play all subsequent tournaments in flip-flops. Minor differences in foreign exchange rates is not the reality of BG store, it explicitly forbids players of certain progression levels from accessing certain resources (which is common to all players) and then asks players to face up against other players who are given the same resources through the exact same game mode. It is not a competition when there are multiple classes of players being created, who are treated differentially under the rules of the competition.

3. Agree that a neutered competitive environment is not justified. But treating lower accounts as fodder for the strong ones is probably the quickest way to kill the game mode.

Every UC and Cav player who gets to GC is a Paragon who won't. If that's because those UC and Cav players did, or would have beaten that Paragon in a match then that's what's supposed to happen. But when it is because someone gave them an A for effort and let them in above other players who would have beaten them head to head, that's a competition failure.

This is not true. Even in a completely random matchmaking set up, it is likely that some UC/Cav players will make it through to GC with some luck.

Further, once a player moves up a tier, they cannot move down. If infinite matches were to be played, each of the VT tiers would end up with only one player as all others will move up. The limit on the number of players in GC is more than the number of players in BG. Even if there is a practical limit on how many players get to GC, it is not the UC/Cavs who are blocking the progress of Paragons but the scoring system which is in place. Additional tiers and higher token requirement was introduced to limit GC access, not siloed matchmaking. It's just a false narrative that UC/Cavs are blocking progress of Paragons, at levels which are of any significance. Just like the 'same rewards' argument when the actual usable resources are only accessible in the store.

Yes, those Paragons would be able to move up faster if they faced the progressing UC/Cavs sooner. But they are also being rewarded at a higher rate for facing the more difficult competition (though not relatively). The absolute best players are anyway at the top.

unknown

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Every UC and Cav player who gets to GC is a Paragon who won't. If that's because those UC and Cav players did, or would have beaten that Paragon in a match then that's what's supposed to happen. But when it is because someone gave them an A for effort and let them in above other players who would have beaten them head to head, that's a competition failure.
This is not true. Even in a completely random matchmaking set up, it is likely that some UC/Cav players will make it through to GC with some luck.

Further, once a player moves up a tier, they cannot move down. If infinite matches were to be played, each of the VT tiers would end up with only one player as all others will move up. The limit on the number of players in GC is more than the number of players in BG. Even if there is a practical limit on how many players get to GC, it is not the UC/Cavs who are blocking the progress of Paragons but the scoring system which is in place. Additional tiers and higher token requirement was introduced to limit GC access, not siloed matchmaking. It's just a false narrative that UC/Cavs are blocking progress of Paragons, at levels which are of any significance. Just like the 'same rewards' argument when the actual usable resources are only accessible in the store.

in other words, if only the devs would let them, everyone could get into GC, so its their fault.

That's ridiculous. In terms of explaining to players what's happening, that's completely missing the point. In terms of trying to advocate for some sort of change, that's completely nonsensical.

If players want to know why the match maker works the way it does, and why that's fair, that explanation is out there. The devs are not going to forget they made a competitive ladder game mode and stop balancing the number of people to reach GC. However, if players want to claim that isn't fair and try to convince someone to change it, they are going to have to do a whole lot better than that. And I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me to try to help them in that regard.

As to the rest of it, you can say that's not how things work, but I think anything more I would say about it would only be preaching to the choir. You don't present actual arguments beyond fiat statements. And while you can certainly try to reverse that assertion, again, I'm fine with letting people judge which is which at this point. I was simply stating, for the record, that your other statement about me ignoring these issues altogether is trivially provably false. There's very little about how Battlegrounds functions that I haven't addressed yet in at least some detail, nor any argument for radically altering it that I haven't given its due at least twice.

Yeah, I would have to concur on that front. Not everyone will make it to the GC. I don't necessarily agree with some of the more fundamentalist views about it being completely exclusive, but I don't see a system where everyone is in it.

phillgreen

Part of the problem is tying valuable objectives to BG's

I will forfeit until I get 10 easy wins for the final milestone then bum around doing the regular objectives before a GC push in the final week.

The mode disincentivises faster pushes by anyone other than those who can climb GC and be successful in it by adding objectives that are easier to obtain by hanging around.

I'm starting to think that tying any objectives, regular and special, to qualifying in GC will be better long term than encouraging people like me to do the bare minimum.

phillgreen

Pushing faster at the moment disadvantages me so why would I deliberately push?

Stature

Every UC and Cav player who gets to GC is a Paragon who won't. If that's because those UC and Cav players did, or would have beaten that Paragon in a match then that's what's supposed to happen. But when it is because someone gave them an A for effort and let them in above other players who would have beaten them head to head, that's a competition failure.
This is not true. Even in a completely random matchmaking set up, it is likely that some UC/Cav players will make it through to GC with some luck.

Further, once a player moves up a tier, they cannot move down. If infinite matches were to be played, each of the VT tiers would end up with only one player as all others will move up. The limit on the number of players in GC is more than the number of players in BG. Even if there is a practical limit on how many players get to GC, it is not the UC/Cavs who are blocking the progress of Paragons but the scoring system which is in place. Additional tiers and higher token requirement was introduced to limit GC access, not siloed matchmaking. It's just a false narrative that UC/Cavs are blocking progress of Paragons, at levels which are of any significance. Just like the 'same rewards' argument when the actual usable resources are only accessible in the store.
in other words, if only the devs would let them, everyone could get into GC, so its their fault.

That's ridiculous. In terms of explaining to players what's happening, that's completely missing the point. In terms of trying to advocate for some sort of change, that's completely nonsensical.

If players want to know why the match maker works the way it does, and why that's fair, that explanation is out there. The devs are not going to forget they made a competitive ladder game mode and stop balancing the number of people to reach GC. However, if players want to claim that isn't fair and try to convince someone to change it, they are going to have to do a whole lot better than that. And I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me to try to help them in that regard.

I have a lot of respect for you, so it is frustrating to see you either deliberately misrepresenting what I have said or completely missing the point.

You were the one who made the claim that every UC/Cav progressing in BG is taking a spot away from a Paragon. I was just pointing out that what was changed when more people got into GC was the scoring system and the changes in response has been more VT tiers and a harsher scoring system. You don't need to gaslight an entire section of the player base to deflect from that change.

For the record, I'm happy with the status quo in BG. It would be nice if people stopped tell others who play within the rules of the game that their progress is undeserved.

Ironman3000

You are just wrong on this. Kabam's matchmaking is artificially boosting some low players and stalling some mid to high players. It's a fact, not an opinion.
It is also a fact that those stalled high players are getting a lot more in BG rewards every season than the artificially boosted players you are talking about. That is the context you should use to evaluate this scenario. That is the compromise the game chose to balance participation and game experience for a broader set of players.
How, exactly, are players who are finishing in lower tiers "getting a lot more BG Rewards every season" than those who finish in higher tiers? You're gonna have to show your work there.
Unless you think 7-star shards and high end rank up material are worthless, isn't it obvious? A Paragon in Sliver or Gold is getting access to rewards from BG which a UC/Cav can't even if they hit Diamond or Vibranium. Within BG, what exactly are they doing different to justify this spread?
Wrong.

You're confusing rewards with prices. You also didn't show you work to prove that a Paragon in Gold is "getting a lot more BG Rewards every season" than a UC/Cav in Diamond or Vibranium.
Because a Paragon gets 7* shards and others can't, and higher mats which is non sense.
It's not nonsense. The prices are also different. That means it's not the "same" Rewards.

When you became Paragon last season, did you lose all of the tokens that you earned as a TB or were you able to use those TB-earned tokens with the updated Paragon prices and items?