Taking A Look At Matchmaking and Tier Progression

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
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Consider it done!

Hey everyone. It’s been a hectic few weeks recently, but I feel you all deserve more love from me than the amount I’ve had time to give lately. It’s because of this that I wanted to stop by and talk to you about some of these issues you’ve brought up.

You guys have been talking about the lack of players willing to progress through tiers which impacts the whole matchmaking experience. I wanted to let you know that we had the chance to bring this up with Hibernum, and we’re working with them on figuring out what exactly is going on and how to address it.

In order for me to get a better idea of this issue though, I’d love to start a brainstorm session with everyone. I’ve talked to several players already, but would this be a correct analysis?

TL;DR: Players with high-level decks are purposefully staying in lower tiers, because the rewards they would receive in higher tiers are not worth the effort of having to deal with more difficult battles. This causes newer players to have to go up against difficult opponents (such as Koth or Kiora decks) that shouldn’t be in their grouping.

What Other Players Have Said
(Names have been omitted to avoid potential witchhunts)

The Issue
Players who have high-level decks are purposefully staying in tiers lower than they should be in. This causes newer players to encounter very difficult matches, discouraging them from continuing to play.

I know a lot of players with a very big collection will intentionally avoid playing all their cards and going up a tier because the battles are much more difficult. That results in decks that belong in the platinum tier flooding the gold tier.
The Reason
Players who should be in higher tier don’t want to progress, because they feel the progression rewards are not good enough to warrant dealing with the more difficult matches they would encounter.
Bottom line for me is that at this point, even though I could tier up, I do not want my event performance to suffer for the mediocre reward gains of moving up.> Mastery is not working as intended because the rewards are not better if you move up.
Player-Suggested Solutions
A simple solution to people hiding in bottom tiers with dominating decks would be to just award mastery points as prizes as well in the top 25.

If you’re topping the charts consistently, you eventually tier up.> Give a bigger differential between tier rewards. Just like in saheeli event, maybe only top player gets mythic in Bronze, top two in silver, top 3 in gold and top 5 in platinum. I’m sure the saheeli event caused the single biggest mass migration between brackets as people were forced to move up. And add a multiplier effect to your coalition score from events when you move in the tiers. > Give more progression rewards to the higher tiers, so for eg bronze progression will stop at 2 reward brackets, silver at 4, gold at 6 and platinum at 8 or something.

This also simultaneously solves all the complaints that progression stops too early(usually from the really serious players who should be in platinum eventually anyway). > Add a diamond tier that doesn’t rely on mastery. A side NOP style event runs before every event(overlap with last running event?) that’s only open to platinum players. Players play that event to battle 10 players within their groups. Highest score or best time gets to progress to Diamond tier, so top 10% of platinum gets to play diamond tier next event. Diamond tier empties back to platinum pool after event. Serious players get to play more pvp event matches this way and it’s completely optional(for those that insist peer pressure in coalitions cause them to play more than they want to)

Litter diamond tier with exclusive non game altering prizes, like alternative card art, forum flair, etc. Limited collectable stuff that will tempt players who don’t value mythics as highly anymore. Diamond tier players gain potential to earn extra event points for coalition.> They need a more robust algorithm that takes into account your win/loss record, the strength of your previous opponents, and your card pool to a lesser extent.Would this be an accurate assessment of the issue at hand? Do you think improving matchmaking to force players to tier up is a good solution, or do you think it’s better to improve the rewards at higher tiers instead?
Or do you think I’m completely off the mark? Let me know what you think!

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What about duplicate opponents and non-event decks. These are issues at any tier that affect the play experience.

Also level differences. It is supposed to be +/- 5 and in Bronze specifically it is often more like +/- 7-10.

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What is matchmaking based on, exactly? Is it what bracket you’re in? Because it seems like the pool shrinks the higher in rank you move up. The variety of opponents is bigger in the beginning of events, and tends to shrink as I earn more points. At least, that’s my experience.

If this is the case, then maybe the matchmaking criteria should be changed.

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There’s also the problem of AI being inadequate right now to sift really good players from the very good players, resulting in the 60 way tie for first place this event.

This I feel is a very urgent matter. Making events more tedious has not worked. Neither has making non event decks eligible to be picked as opponents.

You’re either going to need a much better AI that poses a challenge, actual pvp, or event objectives that are actually challenging, not tedious.

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Regarding mastery please also reconsider way of obtaining it. The issue is that if I have consistent decks I do not see a point in adding some non-mastered cards just to progress in mastery. Why should I?
To make it more rewarding - maybe after mastering cards just lower possibility of getting them from pack? Or give some crystals (small amount) for converting duplicates of mastered cards

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I agree with most of what you’ve said here, but I still think personally that many of the games I play I win just because they are total mismatches, either because I’m playing against decks full of rubbish cards, or just because I’m playing with completely overpowered ones.

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I just started a second account on my wife’s iPhone to see if there’s any noticeable differences between iOS and Android. The current event is my second event. I played against a level 14 Nissa while using a level 2 Chandra. That’s a pretty huge level difference and nearly impossible to win as a starting player. Beyond mastery, this is definitely something that needs to be looked at because if I was a new player, I would have quit playing already. Leveling up doesn’t help either because you (almost) always get opponents that are at least 5 levels higher than your planeswalker.

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It would be more of a hassle but it would seem to make more sense that you enter a deck and planeswalker and then that is evaluated to see what tier you’re playing. Level 60 Kiora with 5 mythics 4 rares and a common → Platinum, Level 30 Chandra 6 commons 3 uncommons and a rare → bronze. It should come with the caveat that if you want to take your common deck to Platinum then you can but you can’t sandbag your all mythic deck to bronze. For something like NOP either your 5 entries are averaged out or take the highest, just as long as the method is made clear to the player.

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I like your approach. Though we have no information on how the pulls are generated. But if you take for granted that it’s however “random”, your first idea would manipulate randomness, which is something i’d rather not play around with too much. Your second idea i like very much and it would certainly be a hell of a grinding challenge with a tempting reward. However it shares one characteristic with a lot of other ideas by the community by just giving players more free crystals for things they are already doing anyway as a result, and i can understand why the devs dont like those. Maybe they can figure out something creative, they have shown that they are capable of it in the past. But again, i like your approach.

However for what it’s worth, the goal when redefining the matchmaking system should be to have the outcome be similar to games like LoL where players are being put in their place by moving up and down in the tier ladder depending on wins and losses. That would require to find a way to make players lose more games (maybe let the AI start and look how this affects the statistics?). And of course this would require additional changes like increasing the number of tiers.

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I think they should embrace the PvE aspect more make your AI oppointed be boosted to lv 140 at gold with comparable Hp and mana gains like the 5th nodes in the avacyn event.

Maybe plat can have that and the AI gets 30 loyalty points at the start of every turn so they can cast their level 3 before the match.

I think games will be much more challenging and more fun than they currently are

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Is Tier weighted for coalition scoring? Does making 100 points in bronze = 100 points in silver for coalition ranking? I know that in our coalition, there are a few people slumming in Bronze and Silver because the immediate jump in deck toughness has been widely reported and people are concerned that their contribution to coalition ranking will take a dramatic hit.

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The best way to have people brainstorm is to be transparent about how matchmaking works (or any other pertinent info). We can’t suggest things while information about how things work is withheld.

Either way, one suggestion: Make a higher mastery allow players to use more dual color planeswalkers in an event.

Bronze: 0 duals allowed
Silver: 1
Gold: 2
Platinum: 3

Tweak numbers however you want.

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Exactly

1 more suggestion is to make platinum tier score higher coalition points than other tiers. It would force people to move up if they want to help their team score mythics.

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I think my suggestion would help discourage this

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for my case, it’s usually +5 to +8. I haven’t come across a lower level pw than mine in bronze. no easy battle there in bronze :stuck_out_tongue:

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currently, 100 pts scored in any tier is the same for coalition ranking.

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I’d hate to come across as cynical (perish the thought!), but do consider this: Any solution to this problem that D3 end up implementing will involve encouraging players to buy and play with as many cards as possible. Excluding cards from the pool is probably a non-starter of an idea.

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I meant dual walkers. So in bronze you wouldn’t see any on the nodes.

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Hi, thanks for looking at this issue.

I just want to say that this is not a good description of the situation at all. What it should say:
“Players with high-level decks are purposefully staying in lower tiers, because the rewards they would receive in higher tiers are lower than the rewards they receive in lower tiers. This is primarily because the players in higher tiers achieve higher scores in events”.

The two main differences:

  • It’s not a trade-off between reward and effort. It’s a direct lowering of expected rewards. The trade-off is between rewards-per-rank and ranking, and the net effect is lower rewards for the same score.
  • The quality of opposing decks is not the most important difference between the ranks. The important difference is the quality of other players in the same event. Even if I got exactly the same score in gold that I currently get in silver, I’d be ranked lower, because the other people in gold get higher scores.

I think it’s very important not to get the actual cause and actual problem wrong, since solving the wrong problem will result in the wrong solutions.

Also, the fact that it’s primarily a question of what ranking you achieve for what score, it’s easy to get a first order approximation of the change that would be required, by simply comparing the rewards given out in different tiers by score.

On another (related) topic, I just want to emphasise as well just how little difference the AI decks really make. For starters, it’s an even playing field*, if the opposing decks are harder they’re harder for everyone. Losing feels bad, and it feels worse if you find an excuse to perceive the reasons for it as unfair in some way, but it’s a necessary evil to avoid the massive ties on first place that we get in NoP. If anything, people don’t lose enough games. So the “problem” as it were is really just a matter of perception, if people feel the opposing deck was “unfair” they’re unhappier because of that, but otherwise it’s doing more good than bad to have some challenging decks in the pool.

Secondly, when I lose it’s to a string of AI cascades and (probably more importantly) a horribly closed board on my turns where I can’t get any mana to respond. What cards the AI spews out, yeah it makes a difference, but it’s not the most important factor. I can lose to any rubbish if my own deck is poor and I can’t get mana, whereas my good decks pretty much never lose no matter what crazy tinykitties the AI pulls.

To put it in perspective, even if every event was Avacyn, I wouldn’t want to be in a higher tier.

For the record, personally I don’t go out of my way to stay low, but I certainly don’t feel any motivation to go out of my way to master additional cards either. The end result is I have very good cards for Silver (though that’s partly also because I’m very close to getting pushed out of it). I feel genuinely sorry for people who went out of their way to master cards on the assumption that the result of doing so would be of benefit to them.

  • actually it’s not an even playing field because the matchmaking is bugged and gives each person the same opponents over and over, for reasons which have never been explained. But that’s a separate issue.
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The thing is, that may not be a bug, that may be a feature. Maybe the algorithm that guides matchmaking can ONLY choose from a handful of players due to your win/loss ratio, card power weightings, or some other hidden mechanic that the player base is unaware of.