Proposed Infamy Tweak - Linked to Performance

Been thinking about this for weeks now and it keeps coming up in topics like this https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/hate-being-penalized-for-doing-well.13524/#post-62936, or "what's the greatest infamy you lost (not on purpose)". Infamy isn't everything but it is hard to get that out of player's head. This is the currency system the game has given us to show how well we are doing.

I too have been victim to the downward spiral of Battle Bay. I went from 1900 infamy to 1300 in just a few days. Many other posts have come to the rescue to point out solutions such as taking a break to clear your head or that it is a 5 person game and so many things could go wrong (fixer vs none, no teamwork, low level teammate compared to rest etc.). My bad losing streak also did something else to make it more challenging. I went from near 2000 infamy, where players know how to work together to close to 1k, where the opposite applies. So I dug a hole that I think would be much harder to climb out of than going from 3k infamy to 2k (IMO of course).

So what to do? The infamy system is ok (for the most part) so the goal is not to scrap it, but to tweak it. In the current system players gain 24 or lose 24. Which can give the sense of great progress for win streaks, but also opens for dropping several hundred infamy in just a dozen matches. The solution is to not blanket the whole team with a win or a loss, but to adjust it according to merit. We already rank players on each team by 1-to-5. So adjust the infamy gained and lost by a small amount, respective of their performance in the match.

A new system would award infamy like this:
Winning team Losing team
1. +28 -20
2. +26 -22
3. +24 -24
4. +22 -26
5. +20 -28

Rationale is simply that the top player on the winning team gets a bonus. Same for losing team. You still lost but you will not drop infamy so fast. This will keep like infamy players together longer and slow down anyone's bad luck spiral. Note that I considered 3nd place to get full credit. The logic is 3rd is average and you either performed better (1st and 2nd) or worse. I also looked at making 2nd place the zero point and in a way it looked a little better, but lacked as strong logic. Infamy would range from 26 to 18 instead of 28 to 20. I am not sure how this would factor into the big picture or if it does the same thing. I also chose to do a minor adjustment of + or - 2 infamy, but other values could be entertained. Why is it 24? Why are ties 1? I think ties should be more but that is a different thread entirely.

The new system might help to deter those suicide speeders and even clubbers. You wont be able to die first (or last) and reap the benefit of the rest of the team who worked hard. It will also help to put people in their correct infamy as great players will advance faster than mediocre players. The converse would also apply.

I think this seems like a small change but I think it will have a big positive impact in the game. Open for comments and suggestions on how to make this a reality!

 

The problem with that system is that there is no 100% accurate way to measure ‘contribution’. If you start awarding more infamy based on damage, then it’s going to unfairly bias ships that do big damage, namely shooters, and ships with better upgrades.

That’s gonna suck for f2p people trying to get into nightmare, as they will always be outgunned. Smallest rewards when they win, biggest punishment when they lose.

 

Sorry, I was replying to the OP. You just ninja’d in the middle while I was typing

But, incidentally, I support your idea. Especially given the power creep. As more p2w players enter the game, and more lower tier players upgrade. It’s going to become harder and harder for people to maintain thier infamy. The -800 system isn’t flexible enough to accommodate that.

 

Agree with all comments so far. This would only work if the current post game "rank" system is deemed acceptable. It has improved over the months, and when I play fixer I am not always in last place .

Also remember if you WIN, you would still go up in infamy in 5th place. I too am concerned it becoming a damage-fest metric but lets face it, currently it is the cleanest we can make it. The more damage you do the more you are ready for a tougher challenge.

Topic for another thread, but maybe post match ranking should be tied to the badges you get. Seeing as they have 1 to 4 star difficulty, maybe after the match you are ranked depending on how many stars you earned.

 

On the surface, I understand why this seems like it could be a good suggestion.
But it is not. Let me explain...

Imagine a Speeder. With a Carronade. And some Nitros. Imagine he has figured out how to be a massive distraction to the other team. His weapon doesn't do much damage, in fact, he rarely even fires it because he's too busy zipping around drawing fire. Let's say he climbs up to Nightmare with this strategy! His "contribution" is almost entirely intangible (nearly zero damage), but it is a massive contribution nonetheless -- because his teams keep winning!

(Remember this Speeder as I make my argument below...)

If you thought the post-game "rankings" were scrutinized/complained about before, it will go under hyper-focus with a change like this.
As it is now, it doesn't matter what ship/weapons you use, if your team wins, you move up equally.
Right now the incentive is pure. Win. Win however you think you can, and you will move up.
And this promotes variety in the meta - in both build and tactics (or at least it doesn't deter variety)...

However, after a change such as what you're proposing, you are introducing a secondary - perhaps contradictory(!) incentive.
People would figure out how to get to the top of the chart (using different builds and in-game tactics), and prioritize THAT over winning.
For example, if you're always at the top of the chart, you get +28 for winning, and only -20 for losing.
You'd still try to win, but that would be your SECONDARY incentive. Your FIRST incentive is to employ your new build/tactics to make sure you're top of the list.

Remember that Speeder? Does he deserve to be ranked as high as he got? YES.
Do you think after a change like this, his tactics will be "properly" scored and he will show up in the correct post-game ranking spot? I'm not so sure...

Even if Rovio figures out how to calculate and take into account some of the intangible "contributing factors" (which they actually already try to do), there's no way they will EVER perfectly balance them compared to other contributing factors.
In fact, I would argue that it is an impossible task, far too dependent on subjectivity.
Why ask them to try to get this perfect? You're setting them up for failure...
By having infamy gain/loss be equal for all winners, they don't NEED to figure out how to perfectly balance one type of contribution vs. another...
Right now, if your build/tactics help your team win, you will move up in the long run. If they don't help your team win (even if you're doing crazy high dmg numbers!!!!!), then guess what, your team is still losing, and you shouldn't move up yet.

I used to play War Robots. Unfortunately, they gave rewards based on post-game ranking exactly as you are suggesting.
It was NOT healthy for the meta. It was NOT healthy for variety. It was NOT healthy for people learning fun and creative ways to win.
@ Rovio - Please do not make the same mistake they made... Please do not change the infamy gain/loss. It is PERFECT how it is now.

 

This isn’t an uncommon outcome for me. As you can see, I’m way down the list in terms of damage, but I got by far the most kills.

That’s actually a good thing. If I get top damage, it means the shooters aren’t doing thier job. My job is making sure things die.

I may be bias, but ‘I feel’ I was pretty important in winning that game. I was right in amongst the unfriends: drawing fire, putting people on stun, and running down damaged ships. Yet I only got 1 star (even a floater would have got 1 star).

I don’t mind too much when it’s just stars... but if every game, I was making a huge contribution, and only getting +22 for a win, and -26 for a loss. Well... I might just have to give up on my speeder. Which would be a shame, because it’s a good ship that can carry games.

 

I climbed to Nightmare with a carronade, so did T.R.I.G.U.N, WcorgiP and more many people did. I understand it may be hard sometimes, you can’t dish out many damage, because the carronade’s priority is to get up close. Exact same thing, i’m literally like a meat shield with 1/1 hp, i run around with a carronade bugging people to take off shots from them. I don’t really care if people report me for being an idiot but i got up there without money, that’s all i care about. Contribution wise i don’t really mind either as long as you win, you win. If you lose, just accept and play another game.

I almost run an exact identical set up, except with 1 nitro and a tesla shield and 1 carronade only. Main damage weapon is blast cannon.

 

Thank you Viscount and Gnu. Both of your testimonials exhibit exactly what I was trying to describe.
In team competitions (virtual or real), there will always be a spectrum of styles and effectiveness when you look at individual member contributions.
If the team wins, every member's efforts (however they were delivered), had some level of contribution.
I'm not saying some didn't contribute more than others, I'm just saying there's no way to accurately or fairly "measure" it in all cases.
In fact, even if you have a good predictor (which I believe total damage usually is), skewing the rewards too much towards any one style of contribution can have disastrous effects.
If these Speeder styles produces wins, they'll climb, but at +20 vs -28, it'll be a slower, more frustrating climb...
If they play enough, playing the way they want, they'll still eventually plateau at their skill level, but it'll be harder to maintain since they'll dip easier than they rise...
And as Viscount said "I might just have to give up on my Speeder. Which would be a shame..."
That is the worst result imaginable.
Just by coming up with some algorithm to try to evaluate all the various contribution factors, and then offering a little extra reward to those who play to that algorithm, all of a sudden we have lost an entire play-style.
Taking a step back, the greater the disparity between highest and lowest rewards in that algorithm, the faster and more severely different play-style varieties will be snuffed out of the game.
@ Rovio - again, I beg you, please do not do anything like this.

No contribution-ranking algorithm can ever be perfect in a game with so many immeasurable variables (i.e. how do you truly measure distraction, zone control, frustration, etc?).
Fortunately infamy gain/loss is currently equalized. I'm assuming the reason for that is that Rovio agrees with the concepts I'm trying to explain in my posts.
But if they agree so much to keep infamy equal, I would petition them to consider equalizing stars, sugar, and gold (at least the base values) for exactly these same reasons.
The arguments are no different. The disparity in stars, sugar, and gold is small, but still measurable.
Thus, it has a (probably) slower effect on suppressing a healthy meta with a healthy variety of ships and play-styles.
But why do that?
I'd rather see the rewards be the same for all members who contributed (meaning all they did was simply move from their spawn location).
Then you can go ahead and list players in the post-game screen by total damage, so dudes can still screenshot their big numbers at will - with no "punishment" for the rest of us alternative contributors.

 

@viscountshiffit I hear you loud and clear and realize this is a concern. But look at your match. The top rank was a mk4, not a mk5 and he did not get top damage and still got 3 stars. And while I agree with you and @Spinners71 points, we are only debating over + or - 4 infamy per match, which is 15%. Would you really stop being a speeder because of that small change? Nightmare league meta says not to. The idea is not to punish poor performers but rather reward high ones. If you all saying you don't support this given the current metric for ranking boats, I get that and can get behind that. The next step would be to figure out how to make that more representative of how you contributed. But as you have all said, that might be more difficult that it seems. My suggestion was to fix or minimize the downward spiral loss streak that does not reflect how good a player you are, but rather mostly bad luck, teammates, and a dozen other factors etc.

I did not imagine the biggest counter would come from speeders. I had guessed fixers. Unfortunately I don't know much about the speeder class and how to maximize stars.

 

I consider 15% not a "small" difference. I would consider it very significant.
However, the difference between +20 and +28 is not 15%, it's more like 30%.

"The idea is not to punish poor performers but rather reward high ones"
1. Rewarding high performers = punishing poor performers
2. How do you measure this? (This is the ENTIRE point of my posts)

The TEAM won.
How do you know or measure which member was a "high performer" more than any other?
The contributing factors to TEAM SUCCESS are much more than just damage, kills, healing... there are so many other intangible variables: effective communication, calling targets, rushing in, not rushing in, harrassing with napalm or carronade, or both, zone control, mine distractions, speeder distraction, ... THIS LIST IS VIRTUALLY ENDLESS!!!

The point is......
High performers ARE more rewarded than poor performers.
How? You will win more games over time, which will, in the long run, result in higher infamy, rewards, etc...
Will bad players lose every game? No.
Will good players win every game? No.
Will bad players still have winning streaks? Yes.
Will good players still have losing streaks? Yes.
If bad players get the same post-game infamy gains as good players, will they eventually rise in infamy and rewards? No.
If good players get the same post-game infamy gains as bad players, will they eventually rise in infamy and rewards? YES YES YES YES YES!

The next step is NOT to figure out to how to improve the algorithm to better determine who was the better contributor.
That is completely unnecessary.
Thankfully, your team is random and different every game (or else this might actually be necessary)...
The next step is to abandon ideas like your proposal, continue to reward all members of the winning team equally, and let TIME (more # games) reward better players with more infamy.

Losing streaks mean one of two things:
1. You weren't as good as you thought you were.
2. Maybe you really are good, and you really will rise, but it will take time. The losing streak does not mean the infamy/reward structure is broken. It just means it's not going to determine how awesome you are based on one single game. ...and it shouldn't...

 

Yeah... TBH the mk 5 kind of did the ‘suicide speeder’ thing, only he did it in a mk5 shooter (many cries of ‘negative’ were had).

I’m not sure why the other guy got more stars, but I suspect it has more to do with the burning weapons than the system being good at recognising contribution.

As for the 15% (+/- 4), it might actually be a big deal, because infamy is a sum. So at 50%, my growth rate would be negative. It would mean I’d need to win more than 50% of my games just to maintain my infamy. While a shooter with a lower win/lose ratio might gain infamy ahead of me, because he’s doing bigger damage (even if that damage isn’t converting to wins as consistently as my speeding).

 

I was initially a proponent of a modified infamy scoring system. But after reading some of the responses, it makes sense to me why that could be problematic.

Another thing that I've noticed. The guy that does the most damage wasn't necessarily the most valuable to the team. The 'hiders' come to mind. The players that separate from the team or lurk in the background, since they're not able to properly evade shots. They are oftentimes the ones just randomly dropping mines, firing off torpedoes, firing mortars, and their hit rates (which unfortunately isn't calculated in the game) is probably extremely low. If they end up finishing higher ranked just because they did more damage hiding in the back and lasting longer, were they more valuable to the team then the players that fought on the front lines, drew most of the fire from multiple enemies, and did their best to maneuver and evade?

A lot of times, just my opinion only, that speeder that darted around and drew fire, evaded well, and did very little damage; or that fixer that didn't do a single bit of damage, but continually frosted opponents and healed us were a lot more valuable to the team than the guy that shelled out the most damage hiding in the back.

 

I said it before, and I'll say it again:
There's no "I" in "Team"

 

@Spinners71 i agree on all accounts, but circling back to the reason behind this, there are dozens of posts about the despair of going down a spiral of losses. Or hitting that wall where you cannot proceed anymore. If that causes players to quit, and something can be improved to prevent that, then I am for it. Maybe the infamy tweak is no longer worth considering because people now are distracted by guild quests which has been such a blessing to take your mind off of infamy. So for now, this idea can be put on the shelf.

 

In a game where matches are short, and teammates are mostly random, winning (and losing) streaks will happen.
Players need to acknowledge this reality, and stop complaining about losing.
Every one of us will lose games.
Assuming they weren't actually over-ranked to begin with, all it takes to climb back up is a little time and effort.
But if they were over-ranked, then they won't. They need to acknowledge that as a possibility too.
Plateauing after a climb follows similar logic.
Just because you've been climbing does not mean you deserve to be in Nightmare league.
We all have our plateau. It may be skill-based, it may be gear-based.
To climb higher, you must (a) get better gear, (b) get better skills, (c) play enough games to rise above the "noise" of short-term hot/cold streaks that are out of our control.

Nothing about this is "broken". It is simply something that many players do not understand, and thus complain way too much about.

 

That’s a good point. People are often quite bias in thier thinking, and misinterpret ‘regression towards the mean’ as failure.

Your highest ever infamy is not how good you are on average. In my experience there is a span of about 600 infamy points that I can go up or down within (though with extreme runs of good/bad luck, it might be much more). So my true infamy is probably about 300 below my best. That’s not very flattering. I prefer to see myself as averaging 100-150 below my best, but that’s cognitive bias for you. And I’m far from the worst... some people seem to view thier ‘best ever’ as thier average, and think anything less is ‘bad luck’, ‘teammates’, ‘match making’ etc...

So if you’re currently less than 300 below your best, you should probably expect to lose more than you win. It’s not unfair, it’s just normal probability. The problem is people struggle to see it objectively.

 

Beautifully said.

 

One way to change or curb all the complaining about infamy would be to add an additional number to the Player Profile: Right now you have the Player's current Infamy, followed by their highest Infamy this particular season. Why not just add a Season Average score (like kills per battle, does anyone look at that number much?). This would become the nomenclature for players to determine whether they are playing better or worse, season by season. I myself have struggled constantly to improve my infamy; the only difference between me and all the other complainers is I know why I'm not as high up as I egoically think I should be... I haven't learned how to be consistent in my game play. There are days when I can't seem to lose and others where I can't seem to do anything right. More importantly, I have several hours of play where I experienced both in the same stretch. I sometimes wish I could "turn off" the ability to see my infamy on the screen; this way I could just focus on the battle I am currently in, rather than playing worse and worse and more desperately because I see my infamy going down by 24 at a time.

But if I could look at the top of the Main Bay screen (where the real "floaters" are lol), and see a low/high/ and average infamy score, maybe the downward spirals wouldn't seem so bad after all...