What MMR shouldn't be

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

1. Number of characters on roster – Roster diversity earns D3 money (HP for slots, ISO to level), tough MMR drives people away. Folks should not be penalized for wanting every character, should not be penalized for wanting four maxed Juggy’s for the rare 1* event.

2. Total amount of levels on roster – For a similar reason, six Juggy’s shouldn’t tell MMR that the player has another 240 levels of character on their roster.

3. Total amount of covers on roster – simply having lots of covers for potential high level characters does not mean you have the ISO to level those characters.

4. Level of characters played when boosted – boosted characters in any event are an invitation to use that character, it should not be a penalty to use one.

5. Total number of days played – what if someone puts down the game for a month for vacation? What if someone only stops in for the first couple months for the daily reward?

6. Number of days played recently – I hear stories of easier Season X if season X – 1 was skipped. This is encouraging people to not play the game, which should never be done. Similarly, total amount of time played should not be used.

7. Number of matches played – this tells you nothing about a roster, except how much a person enjoys playing. It may be an indicator they lose a lot, and have to try to make up for it by winning about as much as they lose.

8. HP or ISO currently owned or accumulation spent – again this will tell you very little about a roster. Nor should other items (boosts/health packs) accrued be used – some folks are simply hoarders, some don’t use particular items.

9. Defensive matches won – Tankers are looking for teams to lose to, so having defensive wins count against MMR is ridiculous.

10. Number Wins compared to losses – If this is part of the MMR, you will get what you have : lots of time wasted by killing off your roster over and over to make sure you are in the “right” bucket. This is easy to manipulate in either way, and shouldn’t be a determinant factor.

11. Team level differential, either for wins or losses – Tankers are intentionally putting out low-level teams, why punish those that take them on? Luck has a decent factor in any match, why punish teams who beat higher-level teams with boosts, or give benefit to those who lose (possibly intentionally)?

12. Based on current PVP/Season rank – This discourages anyone from playing the PVP events through entirety, instead rewarding joining late and playing late. Some brackets may be full of 166’s and some full of 50’s, it would make no sense to pair them when both ranked in the top 25 of Shield (for example).

13. PVE/Lightning rounds – these are vastly different styles of gameplay, I would hope they have no effect on the PVP bucket.

I’ve been compiling this for myself and adding to it over the last couple of seasons, it seems that the new MMR “test” is a good time to put it out there. There are plenty of MMR/Sharding complaints, some of these I wonder about and some I hear whispered about. I’d love to hear the Developer comment to let the user base know if any of these are used, and the reasoning behind it. I have personally seen weird MMR movement that looks like a few of these were involved.

Ideally, the Developers would lay out some “Rules of the Game” and let everyone know how their game works behind the scenes, so ridiculous guesses don’t have to be made. Perhaps they would get a few good suggestions on how to improve MMR from the community.

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MMR should not be something where you start begging for lube before the pain of node grinding begins. (P)

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Most of these are just speculation on how matchmaking is done. I recognize some of these as forum lore and some are new and as far as I know totally unconfirmed.

However, I think that you’ll find that any Matchmaking algorithm is going to be fundamentally flawed unless it takes into account persistent damage. I’ve long since argued that there are better ways to monetize the game as well as improve gameplay / matchmaking / play time if persistent damage was removed.

For myself, I think any algorithm should factor in your “Best playable” team for any given event. In the current event, my best team only involves one 332 character, so why should I face off against someone with 3x 332 chars? Sure, I have 10+ max level characters, but since all but one are unusable they shouldn’t count against me.

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But if you calculate off best possible team, you are saying players are expected to only use that team composition. So I no longer get to choose my team. So instead of encouraging player roster diversity, this eliminates it to the max.

5

I agree with 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11.
4. Boosted Char Lvls If you mean that the boosted characters levels shouldn’t count additionally to MMR, I agree.
7. # matches played I’m ok with this being a minor factor, particularly if you are counting matches played in the current event.
9. Defensive matches won As long as you’re counting against the MMR number it shouldn’t be a problem.
10. Win/Loss ratio I don’t entirely agree with this. If you’re continuously losing, it’s nice to have the system adjust difficulty slightly down. This helps non-skilled players. The problem is that people can fake being non-skilled players and thus abuse the system, but I think it helps weaker players overall.
12. Current PVP/Season rank I think it’s a decent idea to have it based on past performance at least in some respect, for multiple reasons.
A. It encourages ranking among peers.
B. It slightly penalizes whales by putting them in harder brackets, thus forcing them to spend more to keep up the same level of output.
C. If you’re coming back to the game, the game rewards you at least temporarily for coming back, making it slightly easier for you.
D. It discourages burn out by making it more ok to take off time from the game when you need to.
…

The problem with laying out the rules of the game is that people will figure out how to game the system. If they told us outright before that losing matches would lead to easier matches, more people would have done it from the get go. If they told us they based it on our top 10 characters overnight many people would throw away all of their characters except Sentry/Daken/Hood, and 7 lvl 1-1*s! Overall, I don’t really see this huge problem of tanking, and am not sure what it really gains people except for a slower gentler climb up, and more points in the PVP pool.

6

I actually feel like MMR should factor in all of those, as long as it is not defined by any one of them. It should also take into a count damage dealt/taken, plus what has been healed. The healed needs to account for people lengthening matches when healing for more than match damage, which is actually a sign of a good player.

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But that means MMR is impossible to calculate. If it factors in anything other than my best team, then my best team will be able to beat handily any opponent match-up.

Ultimately, it sounds like you should have an event specific ELO ranking where everyone starts off at the break even score, with some amount of weighting based on the number of available characters, covers and levels for the given set of eligible characters for that event. But then, it still has to factor in the opponent’s points, which is another issue altogether. So amend the previous sentence’s suggestion to say they should offer an “easy”, “normal”, and “hard” node and give points based off the difficulty (and consequently cancel defensive point losses).

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MMR is easy, despite the efforts to show complicated is better. MMR should reset for everyone each tournament. No need for tanking. Pick point levels for tiers. The higher the tier the harder opponents you face.

This calls for the reward structure to be changed to provide a pathway for progress. If the goal for the bottom 100 is to be 1* rosters, make that reward 2* covers and I so. If the goal for the 200-300 is to be transitioning player at the minimum the rewards should include 1 3* cover iso and enough HP to buy a roster slot each X # of weeks with that consistent placement. And so on. The problem transitioning players face is there is no path to progress. There is only cross your fingers and pray.

The status quo of punish vets with sharding, punish transitioners with a dearth of covers benefits no one. Im not saying the game should be a gimme palooza. However, there should be predetermined transition period for transitioning players, and that amount of time and gameplay should be reasonable and obtainable.

The current system irks veterans and newer players. Instead of trying to outsmart everyone (including themselves), KISS and let players have fun.

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Yes. thats it is. In current system if the game is not under " Marvel " Brand names…It end long ago. The puzzles quest play method is outdated and no attractive anymore only " Marvel" save it.

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The current MMR makes it more fun for casual players and new players by actually giving them a chance to rank. This is probably the majority of players, so it makes sense that they will cater to this crowd. Few new players are going to spend money on boosts and shields to go from rank 500 to rank 400, but some will to get into top 50 or higher. Creating a minor league of players encourages growth, keeps the new blood flowing.

If you’re going a purely f2p route, why are you so surprised that the game makes it difficult? Praying is useless without effort. Most of the bottom 50%-60% don’t even really show up in PVP; why should they automatically get a 2* cover? If you’re going the f2p route and still expect to win, you should be prepared to work harder and possibly give up sleep in order to compete with other people who optimize their strategies, AND/OR spend money on the game. The game almost tells you: if you’re ranking below top 100 and want to move forward, then either you need to build your 2* roster more, you have to make a great effort to get into the top 10%, you need to shield, or settle for the hp and few tokens you get.

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With simple tools like average, median and standard deviation you can already imagine quite sophisticated ways of evaluating a player’s roster. On top of that there’s also a ton of data about previous behavior available to fine tune those calculations. But the MMR is a tool for a purpose, a way to enact a certain policy. So the question should be:
Should the players with the most diverse roster be advantaged ?
Or the ones with the most ISO and HP invested ?
Or the beginners ?
Or the ones which dealt the most damage in the last matches ?
Or the ones that received the less damages in the last matches ?
Or any other category ?

And that’s ultimately for the devs to decide, even though we can certainly voice our opinion on the subject. icon_e_biggrin.gif

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So instead of changing the reward structure so that players can brr put on a transition path that will allow them earn their way to a competitive roster, you just want to push aside the people who worked their tail off. You say the system is better now because players want to rank. Apparently, you’ve never discussed the topic with someone who has worked their tail off in a PVE for days, but they the up 21st and get the same reward as the 150th person.

Im just saying that if player A works X hard they should be able to sufficiently transition within a certain time period. It should be the case where player is told work hard and maybe one day of you’re lucky, you might get some playable 3*'d. My position is there has not been a path designed for transitioning players in the new mpq meta. I didn’t think guaranteeing placement over a reward structure is the answer because it punishes ppl that have worked the hardest and because with the dearth of rewards, most players will still not be able to make progress.

People are still in this mindset that of players get rewards too quickly the game will become stale. No, being miserable because you’ve worked ,6 months with little headway makes the game stake till people quit.

What I’d wrong with more players being 1 or 2 covers? Most characters’ covers come up once every two seasons and that number will only go down as more characters continue to get added. Even if players get 2 covers and they’re not duplicates, they are probably looking at 1 year (yes, 12 months) before they get a character cover maxed. That’s not taking into account the lack of iso to make characters usable.

Conversely, under the current system, most players cannot transition with that time frame. Changing the way players can rank won’t change this. Moreover, this costs sales on multiple levels.

Who is a buying a slot for a 3* they won’t be able to use in a year, if ever. So you lose character slot revenue. Moreover, if someone had been working on s character for a year, they’re more likely to buy a few covers, than someone who only had 2-3 covers.

I’ll reiterate, the question is how long is the transitioning period intended to take for active players? Is the current system set up to provide s sufficient path to meet this goal?

I think this needs to be reexamined due to all the changed on the game, and on purport the best way to create the path is by tweaking reward structures.

I’m sorry, but you can’t tell me a player being able to max cover a character in av year will break the economy of the game. Furthermore, I question whether a year is too long. Who plays any game where you can’t get really good characters for a year?

Maybe some 3* need to be put in the prologue. Maybe certain characters should be rewarded more often such ad patch, punisher, hulk, or Daken. I don’t know the answer. I am confident the question is more crucial than MMR and sharding.

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That’s the way they have been making decisions. But this bypasses the fundamental questions that should determine the answers to all these subsequent concerns. The real question is how long should it take to transition and is there a sufficient path provided that permits players to attain that goal. If you answer these prerequisite questions, it will determine the answers to other questions.

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The problem I see with your list is this.

“I want MMR that lets me fight people weaker than myself.”

While that’s fun when you have the power, what about if you don’t? How do you expect weak people to actually get three’s then? Considering only the top percetage gets them, and guilds force people to still reach the top, even if they have the 3 cover, you shut out more and more newer players.

The advantages of having more of a roster still can set you apart.

  1. More characters means more fights with less need to take breaks between health packs.
  2. More characters let you counter high level matchups.

Meaning yes, its more competitive. Welcome to RPGs. The higher your level, the harder you need to work to get higher.

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Usually in RPGs the harder the battle, the bigger the rewards.
Here I’m supposed to fight all maxed teams all the time for the same rewards that Joe Blow, who started a month ago, gets?
If building my roster only means harder fights for the same rewards, why build my roster?

We all weren’t born with good rosters. We worked for them.
Yes, we had an easier time to get covers back then. The fact remains that we have been here for a year and put in the time and money to get good rosters.
We continually get penalised for it.

Sure, pair me against maxed Sentry/Daken/Hood every time. But then give me 1.000 ISO per victory or a meaningful progression reward below 1100.

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the problem is the gap between veteran and new comer
Path to catch up SHOULD be easy. Who else will waste time will gaal to being bit by you?
The game should be easy to get good roster but hard to get championship.

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No, the path should NOT be “easy.” It should be straightforward and doable, but not easy. And there should be rewards for having traveled it.

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I agree with the RPG analogy, the higher level you are the harder it should be to get higher. And it is - the ISO required to continue to get your characters higher increases not on a logarithmic scale but by leaps and bounds. I have no problems with progression rewarding: starting 2* rosters -shouldn’t- be breaking into top 100 consistently. 2*->3* transition rosters -shouldn’t- be taking top 10 spots with any regularity.

Let me amend that first line - “let’s me fight people weaker than my BEST team, up to a certain point”. I don’t think from the get-go a team with say 120/110/94 as their best three should be facing nothing but rosters that look like that. The rest of their team is probably 94’s, which they should be able to use to approach their maximum score, and then use their best team only as a way to get to that maximum score. You don’t want to make folks use only their optimum team every time, that introduces tremendous grind and boredom, which will introduce burn-out.

Last season MMR changed for some transition teams (like mine), and I was crossing to a 166 wall as soon as I passed either 500/550/600 depending on PVP, which before had never been a problem. The original change yesterday seemed to do the same thing, from the get go. There is a difference between working hard to advance (and stephen43084 mentions a related problem, which timing to get covers), and being punished for advancing and unable to advance further. If I was sitting with a full rosters of 166 and met nothing but 166’s as soon as I hit 500, assuming I’d hit 800 without problems previously, I’d be a bit annoyed that the rules changed to punish the success I had - and that is what many complaints yesterday were. I absolutely am annoyed, as many seem to be, when PVE top rewards are full of low-level rosters.

I get encouraging lower level teams (God knows I wish that encouragement had been there when I started), but perhaps encouragement should be through steady rewards (less time between better daily rewards? Better drop rates for tokens?). Otherwise you’ll annoy your vets that are being punished to reward the lower level teams, and you’ll annoy those very lower level teams when they start getting that punishment when they cross some specific, unknown threshold.

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You’ll note what I didn’t put down is what MMR -should- be. That’s a lot harder, and the devs have said how hard it is to get right. This is probably why they don’t give out my primary complaint - the rules to the game, the MMR rules. Whatever they are, they probably can be manipulated if easily known.

It was never perfect, but it seems to only get worse every iteration - I’m hoping folks give good suggestions. I see average/mean (roster level), and that might be a good metric. And again - up to a certain level. Perhaps you could sort like this, or add even more divisions:

0-200: Teams with every character below 94 can’t see or be seen by teams with one level 94.
200-400: Three or less 94 maximum level teams don’t see three or more 94 teams
400-600: Three or less characters higher than level 94, or nine characters of at least 94 (to prevent under-leveling)
600-800: Three or less characters at 166, or nine characters of at least (110?)
800+: everyone sees everyone.
-Each bracket, those teams aren’t seen by anyone else until they break beyond this bracket. Teams are matched up by points accrued, teams cannot see teams that are worth less than 100 points of themselves.

This encourages newbies to compete to where they can, the 1*-2* transition (for example) can pretty easily get to the 2* reward and stop. These lower level teams won’t be annihilated by much stronger teams right away, so it won’t discourage them. Strong teams will still find lots of easy teams to climb up the ranks with, as anyone breaking out of “their” bracket will get thrown into the fray.

This is just a quickly considered example, and I’m sure it’s full of problems. It doesn’t address, for example, one of the biggest PVP problems I think is out there - no need or reason to play/push until the last few hours. But the thought is to do what MMR should do, make appropriate rewards obtainable for each roster, make progression more difficult as you level, and even leave shielding and boosting as an option to get beyond the “correct” ranking.

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MPQ is a game. If it is not easy. whoelse play? dont forget there are tons of game out per month. what rewards? those cover you already have? ok you are rank one of the game? you are just a 7/24 player. does it come with skill. sorry not that much.

It is up to the designer to keep top 1000 or 2000 player and hope they never lost interest or do something to attract new player?

Only those most simple game or complex game long last