Matchmaking -- M6 vs M3

@Ash KOT asked if I'd go ahead and publish a picture of this match up in a different thread which has been closed.



Yes, Mark 3 boats do get sent up against M6 boats.

By the way, this was what first caused me to start tanking as a M3 myself. Note the two M3's in this battle. Back when I was in their shoes I was already overwhelmed by M5's and when I started seeing M6's I knew that I was on the wrong path. So I started losing until I found matches more appropriate for my captain level. Roughly speaking that was around 500 or so. I stayed between 500 and 1200 carefully until my new speeder and I started pushing again. Now that I'm seeing M6's again I'm again wondering if I'm on the wrong path.

On the bright side, the game did balance this match by giving us an M5 floater to offset the M6 LOL.

 

Sad to see a mk6 player do less than 3k damage total. If he hit with one of this T4 big torps he could double that! Haha.

 

Actually, those are all one and the same issue. Infamy-Matchmaking-Rewards all go together to create the seal clubbing problem. There is no chicken and no egg. I was only posting this because Ash asked me to. He felt it "shouldn't happen". It does and it's what caused me to start "managing my own infamy" back when I was mark 3.

My suggestion would be a gear/ship/captain level-based floor. Create a formula to calculate an appropriate minimum infamy for a player based on their gear/ship/captain levels. That is then the absolute minimum that the player can be match-made at. If his infamy is above that floor, then he is matched at his actual infamy. If he swaps his items for lesser items, he has a lower minimum, but as soon as he puts on his more powerful items, he has a higher minimum.
It'll never work. As long as it is more profitable to club seals than fight people your own level then this problem will persist. I see in the new update Rovio is beginning to work on that incentive problem. Note that I like your "gear score" solution and I've proposed it myself. But Rovio is wedded to a skill based matchmaking system rather than gear. The issue then becomes how they are measuring skill. Infamy, as it sits right now, is a really poor measurement.

 

Exactly... and the devs are wedded to a skill-first system. So they need to make sure infamy is actually measuring skill. Currently, infamy measures the highest point that a player is able and willing to achieve. With a system of incentives that work against the design goal the "and willing" part comes into play.

More urgently though, in various contexts I have seen screwed up incentive systems in lots and lots of places. You can't fix the issue by making "rules". People are way too inventive and creative for that. As long as it remains true that people are strongly encouraged to play below their actual skill then they will do so and they will find ways to work around whatever rules are put in place.

Again, I am not arguing against a gear score. Currently they apparently count boat mark -- which is ridiculous on the face of it. What, exactly, does that tell you? Each increased mark adds some HP and defense and reduces speed and agility. It's kind of a wash... until you start putting gear in those new slots. When you take into account the gear, suddenly you realize that a M5 shooter is an awful lot stronger than a M4 shooter -- both due to the extra slot but also the extra crew training, perks, and equipment level. Who here thinks that a M1 speeder with a T2 legendary sniper is something you'd just brush off as a lowly M1 boat? I certainly do not. I think they should not count gear at all or count it properly.

I'm still content to wait and see if the incentive changes they've made in this patch smooths things out. Honestly, as long as the incentive is hosed then there's so much noise in the system that other potential problems are obscured or misconstrued.

 

There should be a seperate league for each boat, so mk1 only fight mk1 or perhaps mk2. But not mk1 or mk2 against mk4, mk5 or even mk6. A child know this. Don't look to infamy, but to the type of boat everyone has.

I don't arm wrestle with my 44 years with a child who is 4 years old, even if we both have won 45 times.

 

I'm convinced that casual players are a real thing in this game.... people who have never come to these boards. Just from watching my team mates play I know for a fact lots of people have never even dreamed of leading a shot... certainly not a mortar shot. It seems like for a lot of people the rule is, "press your fire button when the target circle goes green" -- completely ignoring motion, wave interruption, and overall likelihood of landing that shot. Or how about the guy last night in his well developed M5 shooter who lacked the situational awareness to know that I was right behind him and killing him at a rate of about 100hp / second. So sure enough, nearly a minute later he's dead. I absolutely would've fled like a little 1700hp speeder if he'd bothered to turn all those scary epic guns in my direction. If that was his real skill level then that guy couldn't fight an M4 and honestly needed to be matched against M3's.

In the end, combat power is some function of both gear and player skill. Right now the "skill" part is being subverted by the players because tanking is so profitable but with this latest patch Rovio is obviously turning their attention to that.

 

Yes I was wondering about that too, I thought it was just me lol.

 

Lol some people just panic, but its funny though. Some mk6 shooter with 6000 life didnt notice that a 2000hp speeder was just hitting him from behind eventhough every 5.6 seconds he lost 800 life. I saw his tier 5 sniper, if that critted I would have been screwed. ( I know 2000 is so bad for a mk5 but RNG has never given me a good turbo so I use two shit ones- level 20 rare and level 20 uncommon- giving me a total speed of 1.4 when really I need 1.7. I can equip a 1000 life bigshield as I need more speed)
But as a shooter, with so many weapons, people have a tendency to shoot as many as they can.
Also people wont listen to this, it took months to realise I needed a turbo and when I did RNG never paid up.

 

As I said, this is not new to me. This is the new player experience in Battle Bay.

It'll be interesting to see if the dev's have fixed it. It'll take a week or two for the players to figure out and react to any incentive changes. I saw the new guild quests this morning and they may help. Personally, I cannot imagine why they didn't also attack battle rewards but maybe their being slow & careful?