Matchmaking is completey broken

Also, this is more focused towards 3k+ infamy players to top of nightmare who see this issue. Yes it still exists in lower infamies, but theres too many other factors at play with sub 3k inf. Such as seal clubbers/ equipment differences . Mk5-6 at 500-2k inf playing against mk2-4’s . Etc etc
To be honest i am suprised people even enjoy playing from start unless you have the resources to aquire higher gear and ships faster then f2p route.

This is also an issue for bringing more players to battle bay and having them continue playing until reaching higher infamy levels. Im sure the ridiculous matching with gear differences and new players who have virtually no grasp on how to play yet that keep suiciding etc. Is enough to deter alot of new players from sticking with the game.

Regardless i feel that the matchmaking system was FAR better before this last update where they “adjusted matchmaking algorithms for better match ups” . I dont know if they are trying to make things TOO complicated or not enough, i admit i have virtually zero knowledge to the actual coding process required for the adjustments of the algorithms and i know devs are doing what they can. But i believe it should still be looked at alot closer . Especially with the game being on a international scale now.

 

For me it's like this:
1) win few battles in a row easily (5-0)
2) lose few battles in a streak easily (0-5)
Repeat.

I somehow can't manage to make it over 3300 infamy as Enforcer. 90% of the battles top damage dealer.

But it's ok. I'm actually starting to enjoy playing Speeder at that infamy range even though I don't play it very well.

 

When I started this game I wanted a fun little boat shooter. That's what I got for a while. Then the infamy system decided that I was so good that an M2 really ought to be in battles with 9 M5's. I disagreed and so I started deliberately losing to manage my own infamy. That pretty much tanked any enjoyment I was having in my "fun little boat shooter". I was seriously thinking I needed to quit. More recently it feels like something has changed and while, on one hand, I'm seeing these oddball matchups, on the other hand the system is managing my own infamy a lot more effectively. At least now I can just play to win and I consider that a huge benefit.

The issue for me (as a new F2P player) is that the game starts and stops at "fun little boat shooter". Without any rational advancement system they might as well have just given everyone access to all the equipment at the start and said, "Go have fun shooting boats". They made this infamy system, but made sure that rising in infamy is, at best, a dicey proposition and more likely a losing one. Until there are better rewards for winning than losing, I predict there'll always be mass confusion in the ranking system and things like "seal clubbing" and "tanking" will be common place.

In case Rovio is reading, my situation exemplifies this. I'm probably able (and have been for weeks) to cross into master league yet I choose not to. For me, the problem is that the penalties and rewards for doing so are entirely unclear. The proposition sounds like:

Con: Take this step into uncharted waters and you can never go back.
Con: You'll probably get thrashed for a while.
Con: Your advancement rate will slow down significantly.
Con: You'll get a new 800 point "tanking window" that'll be harder to manage. If you fall below it you are penalized... again in bewildering ways which are hard to understand but board people claim it hurts.
Pro: There may be some benefits to doing so. What they are is anyone's guess so best not to rely on them.
Pro: Bragging rights on the boards (LOL)
Pro: Possibly more sane matches... reports vary on the boards. Tanking is still a thing at high levels.

Yeah... big wonder that the system is borked. I have yet to see any human system work when the incentives work counter to the goals. Part of me wonders if it's just an advertising problem. For instance, I'm hurting for blue parts right now. Would entry into master league help with that even accounting for reduced win rates and placement? Who can say other than Rovio and they don't.

I think Rovio needs to look at why people are tanking and fix the incentives rather than punishing people for doing so. I think they need to think that way with all the other issues in the infamy system.

 

Matchmaking is based off of one thing and one thing ONLY. To keep everybody at or around 50% win/lost rate. If you are over 50% 8/10 times you will be matched to lose. This is true if you look at others w/l rate almost everyone is around 50%. This is bull crap when we need to win for guild quests to count. If you are over the 50% you spend so much time to get one win and more likely it's an overkill vs the other team meaning you don't get much dmg for weapon quests.
The top 5 in my globe raking w/l %
52.3
51.7
55.1
52.7
52.3
Not one person is at or over 60%. Matchmaking will keep everyone under 60%? So what fun can this be when you know that matches are made to make you lose if you are over or around 50%. Never heard of losing to be fun more so when you know you will lose.

 

This is not true at all, you are merely describing an possible effect of the infamy system. There is nothing here directly working to make sure you win/lose 50% of the time. You have to look beyond that to figure out what's going on on the meta level

Ranking in BattleBay is based on Glicko-2 [1][2] (probably modified to accommodate 5v5 teams). These ranking systems are used to measure our strength (or really - our ability to win games with your team), other examples is ELO[3] (used in chess) or Microsoft TrueSkill[4].

The reason why most of us experience ~50% win loss is because when we gain infamy our battles will become harder, as battles get harder we start to lose. As battles become easier again we'll be matched with weaker teams and have a higher chance of winning. We will converge on our "true" infamy (and usually bounce around it).

Usually we play way more games than our ability to win games improve (meaning ship/equipment, crew training, real life skill, and most important - ability to cooperate with team) - and because of this we tend to end up around ~50% win/loss.

While hard, it's possible to beat 50% win/loss, simply improve faster and play less games
(you can do it @American Marauder style, as he did with his alt - buy a great setup, play few games, make it to nightmare) (or do it as a nightmare player, having the "benefit" of being reset to 4k inf every season, making you win more than you lose every season if you just play few enough games)

[1]: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system
[2]: Original paper: http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
[4]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/trueskill-ranking-system/

 

I have a question: if everyone's win loss ratio is 50% (some are exactly 50/50), how do some people have such high infamy? Wouldn't the wins and losses cancel each other out?

 

technically no, because sometimes it gives less or more than -/+24 depending on how unbalanced the matchis

 

also i agree it is very broken, i could care less about how the enemy always has better stuff than me, cause that just means im doing better than people with my level of weapons, but every game i seem to get a teamate that commits suicide or just shoots at me for the entirety of the game instead of the enemy, and we still win half the time lol

 

I went from 2400+ infamy down to 1900+ just because I was over 50% w/l. Matchmaking matched me with games making me lose. Yes I would win some but that's just to keep me playing. I'm at 4000 games played with 2009 won. Infamy don't matter because anyone can pay a boatload of money to make it to 4000 infamy. But yet they stay around 50% win and lose rate. So knowing this game matches you to lose makes this game so much fun.

 

I guess I'm unclear on your desired behavior.

Let's use me as an example back when I was in my newly minted M2 shooter. Down at the 300-500 infamy levels I was winning... a lot. Honestly, even fighting M3/4 boats was often times astonishingly easy. People would just do the dumbest things and so their racks of, what seemed to me at the time, god-like gear weren't that scary. Bullets don't hurt when they miss. So my win rate was high. My kill rate was high. And really, I wasn't facing any challenge. What do you think the game ought to do about that? Should the game have left me in some sort of semi-permanent seal-clubbing mode or should it have done something else? If so, what?

 

I rose up to 1300 on an MK2 and I regretted it so I crashed my infamy too. I just crossed to get the +%60 battle rewards leauge bonus and now I'm floating between 600-800 infamy range.
I don't know if you can lose your leauge bonus if you the season ends and you're at a lower infamy. But it is some what worth it to do exactly as I did, it is a couple of hours of pain of fighting fully decked MK5-6s with tier 2 or 3 epics and getting your HP totally wrecked with blast of a single mortar on an MK2 with tier 2 rares but you wouldn't be doing that for long and just pray you do well enough that your team carries you. (damage btw, is not the only measure to contribution to win. Getting 3 or 4 shooters to focus you and stall them with mines and laps around map while your team picks them off is team play)
You should do the same IMO, the season rewards is crap and game economy is very greedy and completely skewed towards their p2w garbage but a Master 3 battle bonus reward helps a tiny bit.

 

Heh, right now my awesomeness seems to be in some question since I seem to top out at about 1100 in my M4. Part of that is that I'm pretty sure they've fiddled with something in the matchmaking system. But part of this is I've gotten frustrated with my teams enough that I'm setting out each battle with the notion that we'll lose so I should just have fun. The whole deliberately losing thing has changed my mindset from being focused on getting better and winning to something else. We'll have to see if I recover my original focus.

Slowly I'm developing strategies for how to deal with non-teams and floaters and tankers and the whole range of behavior you see at this level. I think it'll be the subject of my next noob to noob post