Infamy manipulation spoils the fun for most

Yeah there have been several ideas that each ship has it's own infamy level. Or at least a different matchmaker index. There needs to be work done on this game to create a matchmaker index rather than infamy which keeps a tab on what weapons dps, hp level, ship class, shield/bandage levels and basically match you correctly to the levels of players in the same index level. Not infamy. Infamy is basically trophy chasing similar to other games, and sure, it can determine how good of a player you are at the top of the list, but in between all the lesser leagues, I think this infamy rank is a lot less accurate.

 

Bad idea, which will also never happen. This has been discussed plenty of times already on this forum btw, even in the 4 weeks that I've been here.

 

Not entirely bad, it's just that infamy and this new matchmaker needs to be intertwined that way there's a direct relationship between them. So part of the matchmaker index is infamy too, in a new way, which would then measure skill in the end. Right now infamy doesn't measure skill correctly.

 

The current system works perfectly for this game. What part of it would you want to see changed? Not getting matched against stronger boats won't happen.

 

Perfect is relative speaking. I mean at the top of the boards, it maybe accurate. However, in the middle it's less than ideal.
Some examples:

• Switching between ships that are different in rank/strength: MK5 Fixer to MK4 Speeder, or MK6 Shooter to MK4 Enforcer. Much different strengths.
• Getting a lucky weapon that could raise your strength significantly: Legendary Weapons or even Epics at low rank is devastating. No different from seal clubbing.
• Infamy Manipulation: Discussed here, and you can manipulate it to your advantage.
• Skill and Weapons/Items isn't distinctly different: So one player with MK4 Enforcer at 2800 Infamy with hard earned Rare & Epic weapons as opposed to an MK6 Speeder with 2800 infamy with full legendaries. (the MK4 has better skills than the MK6 Speeder, right?)
• Different Class ships have different impact to the battles. Different levels of Fixers or Defenders etc, enough said.

Shouldn't the matchmaker reflect this? In fact, shouldn't the infamy system be more granular?

 

@D3X Yeah boat swap is a weakness. That's not a problem with the matchmaker itself though, but rather with the fact that all boats share one infamy level. If they made them seperate, that would be fixed. I hope one day they will.

Epics, legendaries etc are not a problem. People that start oneshotting enemies because they got lucky with a legendary will only win matches and climb infamy until their legendary does not grant them easy victories anymore. The system works as intended there and will still create good matchups. Only during the climbing phase the legendary players are too powerful, but the same goes for anyone who just upgraded to the next mk level.

Infamy manipulation is a weakness, yes, but it's also a bannable offense. The only thing I'd like to see is a reporting system so that exploiters can be reported and punished more effectively.

 

Right, but this ties into skill vs. weapons/items debate. How much of that infamy is skill or is it based on the weapon strength? I mean one-shotting or even 2-3 shotting people isn't exactly skill, it's too easy. Get where I'm going? If infamy was perfected to reflect "skill" level, it would make a lot more sense, but it's really muddled together at this point.

One other aspect is that matchmaker, since it doesn't look at weapons and strictly infamy. It's not fair to the players that actually worked their way to that infamy since this is a team battle after all.

 

I don't understand what you want. Infamy is a measure of your capability to win, which means skill and boat strength combined, not only skill. That's what it's meant to be, because that's how you create fair matchups.

In other words, it's supposed to be "muddled together"

 

But does it create fair matchups? If it does today, you wouldn't see a lot of players complaining about the matchmaker and manipulation wouldn't be a problem right?
Well, that's the debatable issue, it doesn't need to be "muddled together" if there was an alternate method to calculate ship strength which includes items/weapons.

 

People are complaining because they see a higher MK boat and then conclude that the matchmaking sucks. That doesn't mean the matchup wasn't fair, that means players lack understanding of how it works and why it works this way.

You talk all the time about how the current system isn't good and you want a different one, but I have yet to see you give a good argument of what is wrong with infamy based matchmaking, or a concrete example of a system you would prefer.

 

I have made suggestions, and it eludes me whether it's on this thread or others. There's too many on this subject already. That aside, I'm simply pointing out that this infamy system has room for improvement, and if you think that Status Quo is great than sure. However, even you have identified that there are issues like manipulation that can't be fixed other than banning (which is not a viable solution imho). Why is a concrete example necessary? It's evident that infamy only matchmaking isn't perfect(even Rovio has admiited this), which you've said yourself. Not that I can't bring concrete evidence, I just don't think I need to.

 

Obviously. You've read Zeus's post on the previous page though, so you know as well as I do that this is bannable and Rovio is working on it.

 

If you read what i wrote above, I don't think Banning is a solution.

 

A concrete example is necessary because while it's easy to point out the negatives of a system, it may be that whatever system you have in mind has way more or bigger negatives. Saying that a different system would be better is meaningless without pointing out what that system should be.

 

What you propose is basically boat based matchmaking. Matches only happen between people with boats that are roughly equally strong, within a certain range. Infamy would then be a rating entirely determined by skill. This is a valid system and would make a good competitive game, but it would not work for Battle Bay.

The reason is that there would be no point in upgrading stuff. After all, when you upgrade, you get put in matches with others who also upgraded, and nothing changes. Right now, upgrading allows you to rise in infamy. In your system, it would not. This would also mean that the devs would have to be fired and the game would stop receiving updates, because if there's no reason to upgrade, there's no reason to spend money, and they won't have an income. Because let's face it, nobody would spend all that money on legendaries if it meant they were going to be thrown in matches where their opponents all have legendaries too.