Kabam: Please Shed Some Light: Am I Really Only Playing a Bot in Versus PVP?

How does the Versus mode actually work?

Are we playing against other players heroes but rather than them actually behind the controls it's just bots?
Or are we playing the game live with real people around the world?

If it's indeed live people, then how can I pause the game, go to work, come back, play the same summoner like those 8-hours didn't just happen? I don't expect my opponent is on the other end waiting for me to finish my shift, yet I play them at my leisure. I also don't believe anyone has ever received a "paused" message on their screen, yet you can pause your match at any time.

Hence, my over-analytical mind is wondering why it feels like I'm playing against real humans, but the aforementioned game dynamics make it impossible for my mind to conceive someone is actually on the other end after a prolonged pause.

What's the trick? Any body know or can Kabam shed light and illuminate MCOC's own caramel secret?

How do you get the summoners into the versus? LOL!

Comments

Mitchell35

Bots. You really think you can bait specials out of a real player? Or bait them into a parry?

TanukiTales

You're playing against AI. Sometimes it's tuned to be worse than your average player, sometimes it's tuned to be completely ridiculous. Mind, Kabam will continuing selling us on the AI never outperforming the best players or what is humanly possible.

DNA3000

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Hence, my over-analytical mind is wondering why it feels like I'm playing against real humans, but the aforementioned game dynamics make it impossible for my mind to conceive someone is actually on the other end after a prolonged pause.

I'm actually trying to figure out why you even think you're playing against humans. The AI opponents in the arena do not play anything like actual human beings.

DRTO

When I first got the game I always thought I was actually playing against other people and so I thought I was such a good fighter as I never lost lol. Didn't take me that long to realize that it made no sense at all.

winterthur

Maybe one day, we get to play PvP against real Summoners.

DRTO

That would be cool, but I could just see the ridiculous amount of problems with connection and lag that it would cause.

DL864

Wait we are not actually playing against other players in pvp. Mind blown 🤯

DNA3000

DRTO wrote: »

That would be cool, but I could just see the ridiculous amount of problems with connection and lag that it would cause.

I think retrofitting this would be a nightmare. There's basically two main solutions to the problems introduced with wide area PvP in a real time fighting game like this. You can do peer to peer predictive backstepping, or you can do central authoritative servers. The latter is expensive and complicated, and the former is tricky and often unsatisfying. And any game that hangs when you push a help button is not a game I would want to do either of those things to.

IceSouLatioN

Thanks for clearing that up! I guess I understood that was playing against a bot, especially with names like Team Thanos or Team Kang... But I'm still wondering why not make ALL the arena players Team Kang/Thanos/Etc?

IceSouLatioN

Maybe a little misleading that Versus, 3 vs 3, and Duels all are not against any actual summoners lol.

DNA3000

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up! I guess I understood that was playing against a bot, especially with names like Team Thanos or Team Kang... But I'm still wondering why not make ALL the arena players Team Kang/Thanos/Etc?

The names are real players: the game servers pick teams from actual players' rosters. However, in some situations the game cannot satisfy the parameters of the kinds of teams it wants to deploy by picking from players: in that case it creates teams of random assemblages of champions. If you see the name of a player, the three champs you face come from that specific players' roster. If you're fighting against Team Thanos of Team Kang you're fighting more random teams. One way to tell that Team Thanos and Team Kang are not real players' rosters is that the team of three champions you face can including impossible duplication: for example, a 4/40 and 5/50 of the same 4* champion. Another way you can tell is that each champion in a Team Thanos or Team Kang team can appear to have different masteries: teams of three from the same person's roster will have identical masteries.

LeNoirFaineant

DNA3000 wrote: »

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up! I guess I understood that was playing against a bot, especially with names like Team Thanos or Team Kang... But I'm still wondering why not make ALL the arena players Team Kang/Thanos/Etc?

The names are real players: the game servers pick teams from actual players' rosters. However, in some situations the game cannot satisfy the parameters of the kinds of teams it wants to deploy by picking from players: in that case it creates teams of random assemblages of champions. If you see the name of a player, the three champs you face come from that specific players' roster. If you're fighting against Team Thanos of Team Kang you're fighting more random teams. One way to tell that Team Thanos and Team Kang are not real players' rosters is that the team of three champions you face can including impossible duplication: for example, a 4/40 and 5/50 of the same 4* champion. Another way you can tell is that each champion in a Team Thanos or Team Kang team can appear to have different masteries: teams of three from the same person's roster will have identical masteries.

Do Kang/Thanos teams even have masteries? Don't think they do. But it isn't because the game can't satisfy the parameters. You'll get Kang/Thanos from fight 4-14 on your way to the infinite streak if your team is ranked high enough. After that it's all actual player teams again played by the AI.

klobberintyme

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Maybe a little misleading that Versus, 3 vs 3, and Duels all are not against any actual summoners lol.

You're playing the selected champs of actual summoners complete with masteries and such, set to autofight. Not misleading at all.

And once and for all, folks need to stop chirping about "skill" winning in AW, WE'RE ALL PLAYING AGAINST AN INCONSISTENT AI ON VARIABLE DEVICES AND CONNECTIONS, THERE IS NO TRUE UNIFORMITY OF FIGHTS.

BluDragon

I've always wondered whether the teams of three are actual teams of three that the real person serving as my opponent is using at the same time (or has used recently), or if they are just randomly selected from their roster. I think they're real teams, because you often see teams of all the same class during a class event, or sandbagging or the like, which I doubt the AI would select by itself.

unknown

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Colinwhitworth69

DNA3000 wrote: »

The AI opponents in the arena do not play anything like actual human beings.

Thank goodness, right?

DNA3000

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up! I guess I understood that was playing against a bot, especially with names like Team Thanos or Team Kang... But I'm still wondering why not make ALL the arena players Team Kang/Thanos/Etc?

The names are real players: the game servers pick teams from actual players' rosters. However, in some situations the game cannot satisfy the parameters of the kinds of teams it wants to deploy by picking from players: in that case it creates teams of random assemblages of champions. If you see the name of a player, the three champs you face come from that specific players' roster. If you're fighting against Team Thanos of Team Kang you're fighting more random teams. One way to tell that Team Thanos and Team Kang are not real players' rosters is that the team of three champions you face can including impossible duplication: for example, a 4/40 and 5/50 of the same 4* champion. Another way you can tell is that each champion in a Team Thanos or Team Kang team can appear to have different masteries: teams of three from the same person's roster will have identical masteries.

Do Kang/Thanos teams even have masteries? Don't think they do. But it isn't because the game can't satisfy the parameters. You'll get Kang/Thanos from fight 4-14 on your way to the infinite streak if your team is ranked high enough. After that it's all actual player teams again played by the AI.

Isn't "if your team is ranked high enough" essentially synonymous with "if game can't satisfy a [unspecified] parameter?"

DNA3000

Colinwhitworth69 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

The AI opponents in the arena do not play anything like actual human beings.

Thank goodness, right?

If the AI literally played like the human players of the game, then it would follow logically that most of us would be unable to win more than half the matches statistically.

unknown

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LeNoirFaineant

DNA3000 wrote: »

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up! I guess I understood that was playing against a bot, especially with names like Team Thanos or Team Kang... But I'm still wondering why not make ALL the arena players Team Kang/Thanos/Etc?

The names are real players: the game servers pick teams from actual players' rosters. However, in some situations the game cannot satisfy the parameters of the kinds of teams it wants to deploy by picking from players: in that case it creates teams of random assemblages of champions. If you see the name of a player, the three champs you face come from that specific players' roster. If you're fighting against Team Thanos of Team Kang you're fighting more random teams. One way to tell that Team Thanos and Team Kang are not real players' rosters is that the team of three champions you face can including impossible duplication: for example, a 4/40 and 5/50 of the same 4* champion. Another way you can tell is that each champion in a Team Thanos or Team Kang team can appear to have different masteries: teams of three from the same person's roster will have identical masteries.

Do Kang/Thanos teams even have masteries? Don't think they do. But it isn't because the game can't satisfy the parameters. You'll get Kang/Thanos from fight 4-14 on your way to the infinite streak if your team is ranked high enough. After that it's all actual player teams again played by the AI.

Isn't "if your team is ranked high enough" essentially synonymous with "if game can't satisfy a [unspecified] parameter?"

No, I don't think it is. It's by design as part of the infinite streak thing. It isn't as though the system can't find regular teams as the same teams that get Kang/Thanos from 4-14 will never get Kang/Thanos from 15-infinity.

Bdavis_2017

Pretty sure this guy is trolling

unknown

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DNA3000

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

IceSouLatioN wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up! I guess I understood that was playing against a bot, especially with names like Team Thanos or Team Kang... But I'm still wondering why not make ALL the arena players Team Kang/Thanos/Etc?

The names are real players: the game servers pick teams from actual players' rosters. However, in some situations the game cannot satisfy the parameters of the kinds of teams it wants to deploy by picking from players: in that case it creates teams of random assemblages of champions. If you see the name of a player, the three champs you face come from that specific players' roster. If you're fighting against Team Thanos of Team Kang you're fighting more random teams. One way to tell that Team Thanos and Team Kang are not real players' rosters is that the team of three champions you face can including impossible duplication: for example, a 4/40 and 5/50 of the same 4* champion. Another way you can tell is that each champion in a Team Thanos or Team Kang team can appear to have different masteries: teams of three from the same person's roster will have identical masteries.

Do Kang/Thanos teams even have masteries? Don't think they do. But it isn't because the game can't satisfy the parameters. You'll get Kang/Thanos from fight 4-14 on your way to the infinite streak if your team is ranked high enough. After that it's all actual player teams again played by the AI.

Isn't "if your team is ranked high enough" essentially synonymous with "if game can't satisfy a [unspecified] parameter?"

No, I don't think it is. It's by design as part of the infinite streak thing. It isn't as though the system can't find regular teams as the same teams that get Kang/Thanos from 4-14 will never get Kang/Thanos from 15-infinity.

I don't believe infinite streak is an actual thing in the game code. I think it is an artifact of the way the game chooses arena opponents. There's evidence to suggest that there isn't any formula that says if streak counter = X and if player team PI = Y then choose arena opponent with PI = Z. For one thing, I can have the same identical team on the same identical streak count generate wildly different but *predictably* different opponents by manipulating the fights immediately prior. That immediately disproves the notion that the team you face is only a function of the team you bring and the streak counter you have.

To put it another way, I believe I can produce teams that *always* avoid Kang teams when played as part of a certain sequence of fights, and *always* generate Kang teams as part of a different sequence of fights starting from streak counter zero. It is a bit complicated, but I have a simpler experiment that works often just not 100% of the time. Start in the featured 5* arena and get to 20 any way you want. Then, start with your highest 5* champs and go downward until you get to teams of about 9.5k. Let everything reset, and go again. This time, *alternate* 5* teams with 4* teams again in descending PI order. In my experiments, the same 9.5k team that did not trigger the death match in the all 5* descending sequence generated death matches in over 50% of the streaks formed with alternating 5* and 4* teams, even when the 4* teams were above 12k consistently and did not trigger death matches themselves.

It is tricky to experiment across players because masteries affect things (or rather do not affect things, which causes different PI for different players to act the same way) and there are small differences in how the arena works from week to week. But I'm pretty sure about what I'm seeing, enough to avoid death matches consistently when I choose to do so, and trigger them quickly enough with identical teams if I actually try to do so, or make a dumb mistake (on busy days, my roster arena recharge can get all jumbled up because I'm not in the arena with any consistency, and then I accidentally trigger the wrong jumble of arena teams too low in PI, and in retrospect it always happens due to the same error).

LeNoirFaineant

@DNA3000 I know how to avoid getting Kang/Thanos, but it seems clear that it is part of the design. Can you produce one example of anyone ever getting Kang/Thanos from fight 16 to anything? You think it's just a coincidence that once you get past Kang/Thanos you have achieved the infinite streak?

Mishman07

winterthur wrote: »

Maybe one day, we get to play PvP against real Summoners.

Fear the God. Think abt the mighty servers of Kabam. Lol

winterthur

Mishman07 wrote: »

winterthur wrote: »

Maybe one day, we get to play PvP against real Summoners.

Fear the God. Think abt the mighty servers of Kabam. Lol

Kabam don't own any servers (or servers on which game sits). It is outsourced to third party. So, there is hope.

DNA3000

LeNoirFaineant wrote: »

@DNA3000 I know how to avoid getting Kang/Thanos, but it seems clear that it is part of the design. Can you produce one example of anyone ever getting Kang/Thanos from fight 16 to anything? You think it's just a coincidence that once you get past Kang/Thanos you have achieved the infinite streak?

I'm not sure how to answer that question. Technically everything is part of the design, and I don't think any property of the arena match ups is generated by coincidence. But if you're asking if there's something about fight #15 that changes the way difficulty is selected, and that both affects when named Kang and Thanos teams show up and the PI required to prevent a sudden jump in difficulty, that's almost certainly true. However, I do not believe the arena has an explicit "and then you enter infinite streak territory" switch that kicks in at match 15. In part because I don't see a binary switch at 15: the arena behavior actually changes at match 14 in a subtle way that makes difficulty drop slightly, before it drops more in match 15. That can't be the result of a binary switch, it is more likely to be formulaic in nature (I'm speaking here about the 5* featured: it is even blurrier in lower arenas).

LeNoirFaineant

Agree with you on 14 being different from 13. 16-19 are also not the same as later in the streak, though I think somewhere in the 20s it stops changing. I always assumed Kang/Thanos were there to help players figure out that they were on the right path, as it were. I don't know about an "infinite streak territory switch" but I don't think I've ever seen Kang/Thanos in any arena after 14. Interesting in any case.

elan0418

LOL... when I started playing the game, I thought the same thing. I was wondering why players with a high % wins were losing against me

. I am someone who is not in to games till I started playing mcoc... now it's close to a year since I started.

unknown

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