An interesting observation

So i was going through player profiles for guild recruitment and i found an interesting pattern. Of all the profiles i saw (including mine) the win ratio that is the "matches won" to "total matches" ratio, was always close to 0.5 this includes mk3 to mk5 ships, which suggest that if you play 100 matches and you have won 50, you are almost sure to lose 50 no matter how hard you try, almost as if rovio has some algorithm to ensure it. Maybe its just coincidence, if you find a profile that has win ratio other then 0.5 please post it below.

 

I agree, in my experience after a winning spree i am sure to get weak teammates. When on a loosing spree Its so frustrating when my damage is always greater than rest of the team combined. And the rewards aren't that much cos you can only get max two stars if you lose.

 

That's just an effect of the infamy system. If you're good you'll get harder and harder matches until you reach your infamy "set point".

From this point on you'll likely win and lose 50% on average (until you either get better, or upgrade your kit).
If you won more than you lost, you would start to gain infamy, matches would become harder, until you lose.. you see where this is going?

Only way to beat the ~50% rate is to upgrade your kit faster than you gain infamy. Meaning, play less, spend more
One of @American Marauder's minis might have a higher win/loss ratio than 50%. I haven't checked, but he has/had a really strong one with few battles played.

 

@Spartacus Read and learn. Maybe he explains the logic in terms you can comprehend.

 

Just checked @American Marauder's mini, as I suspected, he's above 50%

838/1434 = ~0,58

And he's managed this because he has played most of his battles below his true infamy set point
(because of his already acquired knowledge of the game, and because he shelled out for an awesome setup from the start).

If he continues playing he will eventually converge on 50% - just like the rest of us

 

Oh wait, is that a mini?

 

Minis come in all sizes

 

This. The only ones that break the 50% average long term are the top players that doesn't play much but still manages to climb well past 4k every season. Lots of "free" wins to break the 50/50 slump there.

 

That was helpful, thank you. However, that’s not really my question. Maybe I’m not asking in a way that is clear enough so I will try again. Let’s say that you have reached a point where you should start to lose (or win). If the infamy totals and ship levels of a match is similar, how is the system making the game “harder” to make your probability of losing higher? For example, are they factoring total weapon damage into the matchmaking, or past hit probability, etc? That is what I’m trying to understand.

 

Infamy is a measurement of how good you're at winning battles (with your team!) compared to the other players. Nothing more, nothing less.

Indirectly we can say that the following factors contribute to your infamy (your ability of winning battles), it's kind of an abstract measurement of the following:
- Your equipment and ship level.
- Your crew training.
- Your skill and knowledge about the game (and maps).
- Often overlooked, but maybe the most important one - How good are you at cooperating with your team.

When they matchmake the only thing they care about is the infamy number (at least it used to be this way, before the recent tweaks).
They don't really have to care about equipment, crew, hit probabilities, etc, etc. Since it's already baked in.

If you want to learn more about online matchmaking (and skill measurements) have a look at ELO[1] and the TrueSkill[2] algorithm.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
[2]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/NIPS2006_0688.pdf

 

It's a same topic https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/the-50-rule.13141

 

I see exactly what you're saying. They must have some algorithm to decide this, because its too much of a coincidence to go up 2-300 (just an example) infamy or so from a winning streak, which really isn't that much overall, at least not enough to really have an impact on teammate/enemy weapons and gear quality, to going on a losing streak for the same amount if not more. On these losing streaks, the other people I'm matched with still have roughly the same quality gear, but alot of them just end up being super useless by going on their own solo kamikaze mission, never focusing the right enemies, etc. Meanwhile, I'm, for the most part, performing about as consistently as I usually do. There's no way this is mere happenchance, not with how often it's happened to me. People tend to give the same generic responses, but yea I think there's definitely more to it. I think its Rovio's way of making you feel like you're making progress due to your gear upgrades, then, because you fall behind due to terrible teams, you'll likely want to spend money to break the infamy barrier, so to speak. That's my theory anyway. Go ahead and call me crazy, people, I already know some of you will lol.

 

Also, I've fleeted with people when we are both in the middle of a losing streak, and almost without fail the losing streak continues for both of us, no matter how well we both continue to do in our games. So you can't simply blame our performance in such cases, as most people on here are wont to do.

 

The evil infamy conspiracy uncovered! Next up The moon "landing" & 9/11

If you need fairytales to explain your infamy evolution, then I'll try to respect the spirit of christmas and refrain from being a grinch!

 

Not a fairy tale. More llke a theory I formed based off of the patterns I've observed while playing this game, which I explained above. And, to be clear, I am not saying that skill and gear quality have nothing to do with climbing the infamy ladder- just that, from what I've seen, there appears to be a system in place to match people with considerably worse teammates and/or against better teammates once they reach a certain win/loss ratio. Battle Bay for me has, for the most part, been an endless cycle of win streak followed by loss streak, and so on- consistently enough that I can't just write it off as pure chance, or me just having bad games. Part of what reinforces this belief for me is the fact that in nearly every game I play while on a loss streak, the teammates I am matched with tend to contribute much less, as far as healing or damage go, than my teammates do when I'm on the win streak that follows soon (my streaks usually last for a day or two or around 10-15 games) after. Because of this, even if I perform phenomenally in every game, i'm dragged down by these sub par teammates. With all technological advancements we have today, do you really think implementing an algorithm to match you with what it deemed better or worse teammates and opponents- by analyzing average, or maybe even recent, damage/healing done, as was suggested above, or something along those lines- is too far far-fetched to believe? Why would Rovio do this, you ask? Well, the majority of the time, except in rare cases such as with Genki Gamer who is able to get to Nightmare league with essentially all blues because of how adept he is with his load outs, the player that shells out a ton of money but lacks proper decision making in game (when it comes to things such as positioning, aim, etc.) will undeniably have a huge advantage over those who lack such top-tier gear because of how much more easily they can accomplish the same amount of damage or healing, even if they were able to land only 1/3 as many shots. This is just the nature of pay-to-win games such as this. So, with Rovio being a business that always has to keep their bottom line in mind, as well as being a publicly traded company where they have stockholders to appease, they have everything to gain from imposing such a system.

To be clear, I'm perfectly aware that everything I typed could be completely wrong. I'm just saying that, based on the patterns I've seen, and based on the reasoning I've provided, I can see it being quite logical for Rovio to implement such a system. It's not that I'm crazy or trying to blame my lack of infamy/skill on means beyond my control (In fact, I got to the infamy range I now hover around almost exclusively with my shooter, with much weaker weapons than most in this range by aiming my shots well and positioning myself well). I just wanted to assure the OP that his experience is very similar to mine, and that there might be a proper explanation for this rather than it being merely coincidental.

 

I've learned quickly on this forum that no matter how delicately you post an observation or how directly you state your intentions, some people just get right into "attack mode" usually managing to completely ignore the question altogether. From the beginning, I was simply trying to understand the technical details of the criteria that Rovio uses to ensure the high probability of a loss. Everyone already knows that the games keep players around a 50/50 win/loss ratio. You can also do a quick calculation of the total infamy to see that they are usually fairly even. If that's the case, it's interesting to try and figure out what criteria they are using to get high performing players down towards the 50% ratio. If anyone ever get's some genuine facts, it's interesting, that's all

 

I think it’s just your imagination. Long streaks tend to be more noticeable, but that doesn’t mean they are more common.

Just as an experiment, I noted down the length of my streaks (win/lose) for the last ~135 games. See if you can spot a pattern...

My win/loss streaks:
1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,3,1,2,1,1,2,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,1,3,2,7,2,1,1,1,1,1,7,1,3,10,5,1,1,3,2,1,3,1,2,4,1,2,1,1,2,2,4,7,1,3,2,2,6,1,1,2,1,1,1.

Won = 69
Lost = 65
Draw = 1

Distribution of streak length:
1 - 54%
2 - 14%
3 - 7%
4 - 2%
5 - 1%
6 - 1%
7 - 4%
+ - 1%


As you can see, each streak length is about half as frequent as the one before it. This is pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you flipped a coin 135 times.

There is a ‘slightly’ anomalous number of 7s, in this set, but it doesn’t appear statistically relevant.

The number of wins/losses are also roughly equal, however, my equipment upgrades between battles are likely giving me a slight edge, which would explain the positive trend. If you look at any player's profile you will usually see this small positive trend (50-51% win rate).


EDIT: (added colours and stuff)