Additional Tier to Overall Rankings, Infamy & Matchmaking

Right now matchmaking is based off of infamy points. The rule is that regardless of what setup you run, if you are good then you should compete with people who are at your skill level. Theoretically by this system, a mk1 with all commons should compete with a Mk7 with all legendaries if their "Skill level" allows them to keep winning at that infamy level. This is where most complaints come from. People do not want to see HUGE gaps in boat tier and weapon tiers when competing EVEN if matchmaking is based off infamy. So here is my proposal.

Proposal:
Matchmaking remains based off of infamy.
HOWEVER a new element is introduced to the game call "might" or whatever they want to name it.
This value is purely to gauge how much fighting power you have BASED PURELY on your equipment alone. Every single piece of equipment in the game will have a might value. As you level weapons up their value increases. Of course, the higher the tier, the higher the might value. So how can this new value help us with matchmaking?

First the algorithm finds a group of 5 players that are within a general range in infamy. Then it compares the individual "might" values of each boat to further balance out the teams. In addition, when searching for matches, boats that have too huge a difference in might should not be paired with certain ships. That's not to say they cannot keep rising in infamy, it just means that they must win matches against enemies of similar infamy AND similar might. Lastly, everyone's individual might should be different unless they all have maxed items of the same rarity.

 

Infamy already takes into account the gear that people have. This would just make for longer matchmaking.

 

This would be amazing. My mk3 and rare weapons might finally be able to play the game instead of getting 2 hit by an mk5 and it's epic cannons

 

The way the current gear is weighted is absolutely horrendus. This system will be much more precise and we can instantly get a view of battle potential upon viewing someone's profile.

Ex: Oh so you are at 4800 inf eh? But I see your might is around 1300. Mine is 1470 but I'm only 4500, you must be pretty good.

 

Dear god no. Matchmaking was better before they started looking at mks, i.e. when it was pure infamy.

The one change I would strongly consider is using some kind of hidden matchmaking rating (which in practice would be infamy averaged over some time period). It would make tanking less efficient & it would help correct the craziness that is day 1 of a new nightmare season.

 

You don't explain why matchmaking was better before, I personally find matchmaking way better now.

 

Because mk has very little to do with powerlevel in the Nightmare league. Infamy is a direct measurement of your ability to win/lose with a team, mk is a measurement of how long you have played for (or powerleveled). There is obviously a corralation between mk and acquired gear + experience, but its completely artiticial to use for matchmaking as infamy already includes those factors.

 

Wouldn't it be too easy to just use commons on a tier 1 and pair up with low might boats and work your way up the ladder without ever upgrading anything? Your infamy would increase each victory, but your might would stay the same, so your opponents will mostly be other people doing the same thing. Eventually, all of the top listed players will be Mk1 because it's much easier to manage your infamy that way, because based on this system, you'd never have to deal with the current top players if your might was too low.

 

I was thinking that they would never find a match that way but you are right. Epic fail

 

All the problems related to matchmaking can only be solved by improving the player base which can be only improved via better progression in the game so unless this slow progression is dealt with we will have crap matchmaking any other idea will lead to high amount of matchmaking time for players at the top

 

You're right there. I've been playing for months and pay for VIP and some other little things here and there, yet I'm still only mk5. It does take quite a while.

 

I agree that looking at boat mark (their current system) is mostly pointless. It isn't the boat so much as what you put in the slots. I've been advocating for this for some time now because it would solve a whole myriad of problems including things like, "Being able to play with my lower level son". I could just gear up my M2 enforcer with appropriate gear for an M2 and I'd suddenly be at or near his match making level and we could fleet and have fun.

 

no ,bcuz if all legendaries players play against all legendaries players most of p2w players will stop paying ,bcuz no need to get powerfull items if you will be playing against the same rarerity players

ok, now i have never paid in any game and will never do ,so this will help,i guess,but devs will never agree.

 

I'm still a fan of a pure infamy based matchup. Much of the complaints that arise from players who purposefully circumvent this system So lets explore a little:

Infamy is supposed to be a measure of effectiveness in battle consisting of all of the following items
1) Skill
2) Ship level
3) Item levels
4) Captain level

All 4 of the above will generally increase over time, and infamy should reflect that. How can it be circumvented? Generally by lowering any of the first 3 items.

1) Suiciding
2) Playing a lower level ship than your primary/max
3) Playing different items via experimentation / questing

So what is being done?

1) Suiciding and floating is being actively addressed as a violation of rules
2) My proposal https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/level-all-ships-at-once.16185/
3) Reality there isn't much to do here.

If a player sticks with the same items from the beginning and levels them up they will have a nice linear progression line of infamy. You see this with Fixers because their items are limited and their progress is quick and steady. You see it less with Shooters because the most item variety is in weapons, and Shooters have a lot of weapon slots. If a player sticks with a primary set of weapons infamy will generally increase, and if they play with secondary/lower weapons they could see a back-off, but if done right it shouldn't be a big impact.

This is why I'd like the Matchmaker(tm) to focus to be infamy far more than anything else, and eliminating the ship level variance is really the best way left to add stability to the infamy number. We see huge swings in infamy now, I've personally seen as much as a 25-30% swing in a very short time, which is just too big. I've also proposed that infamy itself be stabilized to avoid these huge swings: https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/infamy-stability-suggestion.16034/

Those two changes would greatly dampen most of the chaos that is infamy and matchmaking.