My matchmaking thoughts

Dear Devs,

There are some nice new features, but one thing I was hoping for was an improved matchmaking system. But no such luck. Even before I started playing the first battle today, I checked the chat room in the game and everybody was complaining saying that it had become much worse. I also had such unbalanced battles afterwards. Are these poeple right, did it become worse or did it just not change?

The matchmaking system is the main reason for most people to quit this game. I have a BFF list of around 40 or 50, so many of these people have left the game the last month. I have deleted at least 20 of them, even long time players. And they all say the same thing 'matchmaking is too unbalanced too often'. In my BFF list there were entire guilds in which all 25 members were inactive, all 25! And not one guild, but I have seen more.

I introduced a good friend of mine to Battle Bay, after just two weeks he quit, after spending 10 dollars in the game. Same reason, he came up against mk4 and mk5 with his mk1 and mk2 ships and lost 20 battles in a row.

If you want to 'keep' people in the game, the most important thing is to improve the machtmaking, not features as pink hearts or a different icons in the BFF list. These are not the things to attract people or to 'hold them in'. The only thing what will is a balanced game!

Kind regards,

Flint

 

But the algorithms are designed to match you up with people you simply on paper should not be able to win against. Your friend by this algorithm "needs" to lose otherwise he will reach nightmare with an mk1. The more skilled and lacking in gear your friend is the more and more he will lose to drastically unfair matches because quite frankly he should not be that high infamy. If the devs change this then we will see mk2 in 3 k infamy. No we do not want this and the algorithm is designed to make you lose so you can grind slowly and as you progress in gear either as f2p or p2w you can slowly raise your stable infamy range

 

That tells you how sick this game is. Designed to lose! And they got it all wrong coming up with infamy as a score for this game. There should be another way to come up with keeping score of someones skills.

I heard someone say that every mk should have its own infamy for example. So, with a mk1 you have to work you way up, when you reach 500 infamy, you will go up a level and get a mk2. A mk2 have to work its way up to a 1000 infamy and then enters a new level and gets a mk3. Or something like that. So, then you fight only the same type of ships. Of course there may be some overlap, mk1 and mk2 can battle together, if noth teams are equal, but not a mk1 against mk3, mk4, mk5 or even mk6.

This would create a fairer and better balanced game. But is this really what they want at Rovio? I have been playing this game for 5 months now and things have only got worse. No wonder so many people quit this game. There are other ways to earn money, other game developers have proved it.

So, Rovio please fix this matchmaking!

 

I think all you will get is a response from a Dev saying that the algorithm is a modified version of glico 2 and that all other games are the same and that matchmaking by gear is even more unfair and less challenging blah blah blah.

 

I think it will be more challengin, because it comes down to skill, not who has the strongest weapons or toughest boat.

They can charge money for new maps, skins or faster traing and other stuff. I have more games like that and the devs earn a good living too, but then with a fair and balanced game.

 

The devs definition I was told is that regardless of what gear you own, if you play so FCKN good you can be in 4k Infamy with an mk1 then you do that. The current system theoretically doesn't give a she about what you got gearwise, if you got the skill you can go as high as you want. So basically from the devs perspective, the players who are frustrated that they are mk2 and pairing mk5 is because those players have hit their skill cap. I'm sure that if a bot played in a mk1 they can still make nightmare with aim bot.

 

Too many games where only one side has a fixer. More often than not they win.

 

I completely agree that matchmaking is currently a joke.

I'm more hopeful than you that they have made some positive changes. If those changes are successful then we'll see the impact in about 2 weeks or so. It'll take time for the player base to understand that the rules have changed.

I like to use World of Warcraft as an analogy. In WoW, when you're a newbie, you are given some quest to go kill 10 young wolves and bring back their pelts or somesuch. There's a reason you don't see max-level players slaughtering young wolves in the newbie zones. It'd be a complete waste of their time. The quest rewards and the wolf pelts simply don't have enough value to interest a max-level player. What that leaves is the occasional griefer which needs to be handled separately. Compare that to Battle Bay where some of the best rewards in the game come from exactly that... slaughtering noobs in noob zones. Is it any real surprise that you see a ton of high level players doing exactly that?

I'm not so convinced the matchmaking itself is jacked up. What's jacked up is mark 6 boats under 1000 infamy and mark 5 boats under 200. As I said, it'll take time for any changes in incentive structure to percolate through the mass player mind. Then they'll have to see if more changes are required. I suspect they'll need a round 2 and a round 3 but I'm heartened they are actually working on the core problem rather than addressing symptoms.

 

Yeah, I've suffered under their current system. Unlike you, however, I don't care that I'm punching well above my weight class. That's called "being good". What bothered me is that in most games, when you succeed at doing that you get rewarded. Those rewards are exactly the thing you need to close the gap and then move to the next level. In this game you are penalized for being good. For me, I found it literally bankrupted me within a day. I had to drop down if I was to continue upgrading my gear.

 

Devs will never remove grinding. If you cannot keep winning with your gear, then you hit a skill cap and need to lose in order to match up against easier opponents. Either get good or pay money, or suck up the loss and grind. That's how the game works and the devs will never change the game to make grinding a breeze.

 

Heh, that's not my problem. I'm quite content to grind. In my speeder it's fun and almost zen-like. It's not even that hard to manage my infamy now that I know how to do it without the pain of actually throwing games.

It's only a problem for Rovio because it means they will never be able to rely on infamy as any sort of reasonable metric. I think the recent patch notes demonstrate that they are looking at the reward structures and what drives players to "tank" in general.

 

Sometimes it's hard to admit that you just flat out suck

 

I'll agree MM sounds like a complete joke (I uninstalled a while ago) but good god

Quit spreading these types of rumors, from what i can tell, MM goes off of mostly infamy and somewhat off of ship mk. But there's no "magical algorithm" that makes you lose, that would require some really complex code (rudimentary AI) to pull off, which isn't a thing, and it would take quite some time to do this for millions of people at once, not >10 seconds. And besides, what advantage would it give rovio, people would spend less and quit earlier, which is bad for business

Let me repeat:
THERE'S
NO
MAGICAL
ALGORITHM

 

It's heavily modified glico 2 -_-

 

I think it’s working really good lately.

 

The comment that if you are very good you can go up to 4000 infamy with a mk1 is hard to believe. First of all you have had tons of luck getting good teams, second I have a mk2 and am at 750 infamy or thereabout. I cannot level up my cannons for 6 levels! So, I am stuck at 200-250 damage. I cannot level up my mortars for 4 levels. But I get teams of all mk4 and mk5 a lot of the times and they have leveled up, have epic weapons and often can kill me in 1 or 2 shots. So, it is an unfair fight.

SO, no matter how good you are, it takes just 1 or 2 shots and you are dead. Whereas I have to hit a mk4 or mk5 with 3000 hp over 15 times and I come across people with 4000 hp, so that will take me 20 shots full on. And because most shots are not full on, it takes up to 30 to 40 shots or more to sink them. It is just impossible!

I won 75% of the first 100 battles, now I lost 30 games, because I am way too weak to compete and if you are the only mk2 in a team, well they take you down first. And that happens so frequent that I am the only mk2 in the battle. They should come up with another way to keep score than the current infamy.

 

The older players tend to say this a lot. Like you, I am skeptical. My belief is that the playing field has changed substantially in recent times and I'm a lot less clear that all those high mark players would do so well if they started now. Don't get me wrong. I believe they are good... way better than me. But like you I don't believe they are so good that they'd overcome these sorts of hurdles casually.

What I can tell you is that speed is really your only savior here. I went dual turbos on my shooter and then finally gave up and swapped to speeder. I'm in a M4 with 1700hp getting hit by legendary weapons pretty regularly now. Like you, "don't ever get hit" is pretty much the only strategy. In my case, with a speeder and some 50hp/tick bandages it changes to, "Don't get hit more than once then limp away to heal."

Take heart. I think the devs are actually working on the problem... slowly but they are. The recent patch contains changes to the guild raffle which should help some. Now if they'd address battle rewards the problem would be much improved. In every game I've ever played you get substantially reduced rewards for killing something way lower level than you. Battle Bay doesn't follow that convention.

 

I have played a couple of battles today and can only say the matchmaking has been all over the place. One battle I have a bunch of mk1 and mk2 in both teams, the next 3 battles I have all mk4 and mk5 against.

Some say the new matchmaking is fine, others say it is much worse.

The truth? I don't know, I still think some battles are unbalanced like

Friends Unfriends
3x mk5 4x mk5
2x mk2 1x mk4

And the the next it is only mk2 and mk3. Why the huge differences?

 

I lost 1K infamy

 

Really, i seem to be constant, which worries me as my infamy usually messes around going up and 500 infamy in one hour.