Understanding matchmaking and brackets?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

From what I’ve read in the forums these are the basic concepts:

  1. Each player has something like an Elo Rating.

  2. This rating is based on the player’s accumulated career wins and losses.

  3. The matchmaking algorithm pairs players with the same/similar Elo ratings.

  4. Bracketed tourneys are filled on a first-come basis, when you start (or complete?) your first fight.

  5. You aren’t necessarily competing directly against the people in your bracket, because they are likely to be in various matchmaking rating groups.

  6. In theory, anyone can win a bracketed PvP tourney, because they ascend based on points earned fighting similarly skilled/equipped characters.

However, I’m not certain all of the above are accurate. Based on what I’ve seen two weeks in a row now, player rating may be based on tourney placement rather than individual match wins and losses. Others have discussed it elsewhere and I’ve experienced it myself: placing poorly in lightning rounds immediately affects matchmaking in the weekly tournament when the lightning round completes. This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the number or ratio of wins and losses in the lightning round, only final placement in the 90-minute unbracketed tournament based on score. After placing in the bottom tier of two or three lightning rounds, most of the opponents I see skipping through the 3* tourney offer me less than 10 points, while before it was easy to find 25 point and higher targets.

But oddly enough, while my weekly tournament matchmaking appears to be noticeably affected, I still seem to run up against the same ridiculously strong opponents in subsequent lightning rounds. Why is that? Are matchmaking groups also bracketed to a certain Elo-type rating range, while in the unbracketed lightning round the matchmaking is also unbracketed, so that you can be matched with a broader range of player ratings? Or is it that many of them, like me, got bumped down in rating while trying to participate?

Another uncertainty: while in theory everyone has an equal chance in a bracketed tournament like the 200-person weekly tourney, what if there are fewer participants in my matchmaking group? Is it possible that there are more (or less) total points available to people in another group, making it easier (or harder) for them to climb the rankings? I can’t say I’ve seen that specifically, but if it isn’t so then why would “tanking” my rating in the lightning round return so many low value targets back in the weekly tourney?

So that’s a lot of questions and no real answers from me. I’ve placed well in a few tourneys, so I’m not dissatisfied, other than the same problems many people already expressed with matchmaking. Just trying to better understand the system. Anybody have any insight?

2

I was under the impression that it was tournament placing. I would love for the rating number to be displayed in-game.

3

So I went back and re-read IceIX’s first post about matchmaking, and you seem to have it right. I’d previously read a later post that was maybe a bit more ambiguous.

Reading the first post, there’s a range of similar ratings you can be paired with, and so it seems likely an individual’s rating will overlap but not exactly match that of others. That would possibly explain why there seem to be fewer points available to me in this lower match group; it’s not precisely that there are fewer total points in the pool, but that due to the overlap slightly higher rated players are moving those points up the chain to higher matchmaking pools. That possibly explains why retaliations are important to the structure of the system. Without them, it would be more difficult for those points to be pulled back down the chain, and you’d wind up with a pyramid where all the points are at the top with the more powerful players.

It does seem like the lightning rounds, because they are unbracketed, may have much more weight to change your matchmaking rating. As many total tourneys as I’ve participated in and done decently well, it seems disproportionate that doing poorly in a few short 90-minute tourneys could so noticably affect the players I’m being matched against elsewhere.

4

All i know is that i will occasionally get attcked by the same player 3-4 times in the span of 15 minutes or so, without retaliating.

That crap sucks and needs to stop.

5

That will happen from time to time. Earlier in a lightning round I wanted just to get a round in to get some iso for participating. I tried skipping opponents until someone unranked appeared. I kept getting the same people, several times, before I found someone with 0 rank.