TDM Matchmaking trial

The issue with bringing captain levels in is if your experimenting with other weapons your being penalised for other captains that are higher level.
If I was to jump in a shooter and play with my low level sniper and Berta for example my training on Bhurt and Mortimer is only up to level 12, I would be penalised as I normally have a carro and rail gun so swift is at 30 and buzzkill is at 28 and as I play a fixer feelix is also at 28 this is one of the larger chunks towards me being captain level 43.

That being said I am only playing devils advocate at the moment.
“It’s easier to criticise than to come up with a solution”

 

That makes no sense. How many NM/Ace players will be playing an MK1 at any point in time to find a match? If gear score is accurate, you can comfortably match on that alone.

If you throw infamy into the gear score matchmaking then you are putting higher skilled players and higher infamy players at a disadvantage off the bat... unless the goal is to force a 50/50 win rate amongst all participants. The problem with the last TDM is that it was mathematically impossible to get a legendary perk without spending significant pearls and losing significant sleep, and your algorithm would ensure that one's extra skill wouldn't even provide an advantage to accelerating the possibility of getting to that perk.

 

Adding infamy and captain level to the calculation guarantee the separation of ACE+ from the newbies. Higher end players will always have an advantage purely because they are more powerful.
The 50/50 win rate will automatically apply when the competitions are more evenly match and less manipulation. The manipulations will still existed because people will always look for a way to it. Like I said earlier, manipulating 1 of 3 variables won't give you that much of an advantage.

 

I'm a heavy proponent of pure Infamy based matchmaking, and for the events, a pure Gear Score matchmaking system is what enables players to use all of their boats.

Events: Gear Score Is the only way to allow all 5 boats to be utilized. If Gear Score was further adjusted by Captain Level (which it may or may not be), the differentiator would still be skill, and NM and Ace league players would still win those battles more often than not. I've already pointed out the difficulty in segregating matches by league for the events. Is it fair to nerf a player just because they have higher skill? It's what you are asking for.

Back to Infamy... let's face it, it's a VERY inaccurate number because Rovio manipulates matchmaking far beyond infamy already... and every one of those little manipulations makes infamy less and less accurate. To use a flawed number based on a main boat in a 5v5 and apply that to a tertiary boat in a 3v3 half-cycling situation results in many levels of garbage-in / garbage-out matchmaking.

Like I said, you may have a point, but the point is that you believe Gear Score is not accurate. Let's keep it at that.

 

I just think that with only 1 variable (gear score), the MM is easily manipulated to get easy matches again extremely weak opponents. If you give people the chance to do bad things, they will do it. Fact of life.

 

It's always going to be possible for smart people to game the system in some way, and then the Devs will plug the hole if that's what it really is. For example, there were definitely boats and boat configurations that worked better than others in the 3v3 event, but I consider that adapting to the event. Players who were bringing configurations optimal for 5v5 were at a disadvantage, and that's how it should be.

If Gear Score is accurate, I can't see that it is possible to manipulate matches for easy wins outside of finding the optimal builds for the given event. Gear Score should take into account DPS, which is based on on weapon level, captain training, and perks, etc. It's all built in. At that point you can't just bring a couple T5 Epic ECs to battle on an MK1 boat and expect newbs to be there. You will be matched with higher MK levels, bigger guns, more guns, faster boats, boats with stun/frost/etc. Gear Score should be all that you need for events that support this flexible configuraiton. That's basically how this last event worked. Maybe it needs some tweaking, but the basis was definitely in place.

 

So you are saying the system is currently a flaw one. To make it more refine, you have to add in all these complex calculations in but you offer no suggestions. DPS can be manipulated in last week event because half cool down make cannon not a viable option. Carronade is not a good weapon. Even though there is no infamy losing, people still want the perks.

 

Gear Score is only a gross estimate... the right mix of items and boats is left up to the player based on the circumstances. I was just pointing out if you think matchmaking is not right, then Gear Score is likely at issue. I don't know whether or not that is the case... the fact is if I put high level items on a low level boat I was matched 2 or even 3 MK levels higher... so it seemed to work a lot better than you are asserting.