thesarahandcompany wrote: »

The ongoing debate about team sizes and queue splits is missing a larger design issue with Battlegrounds.

Game as a whole has one big design issue - they bet on casual players, making everything easier and more "friendly" (want to play a bash build and scale offensive stats from defensive? OK. Tired of pushing buttons? Here's a one-bar heavy attack build and gear!). But they don't account for the fact that easy games can't hold an audience for long. People just finish all achievements and leave - that's why the population shrank so much that they had to implement starting Battlegrounds even when they're not full. Changing the game to please PvE players while completely sidelining PvP has led to a situation where PvE players jump in, clear everything, and leave until the next update - or sometimes never come back. Meanwhile, PvP players have left due to balance and combat design changes over time. Many left when RW was reworked (twice: the first wave left when it became non-proc, the second when it became proc again. Most players just switched to GH, but a significant portion quit entirely!).

They should focus on things that attract and retain an audience. Interesting but challenging mechanics make you want to find a hardcore PvE guild, join weekly trial groups, and come back at least once a week to attempt a trifecta. It used to take a month or more to master some trials; now I can join any mid-tier guild, bring a couple of friends for key positions like heals and tanks and pass it first try.

PvP has gotten some attention, but I can't take Vengeance seriously, nor the DK class rework from a PvP perspective - they're mostly unwanted and mediocre. There are good decisions and bad ones, but they're not consistent across the whole rework. It feels like the person responsible made random changes, and half turned out well while half turned out poorly.

PvP players constantly return to the game - they could provide a solid baseline online population because there's no end to Cyrodiil or Battlegrounds. Once you get a trifecta and all the gear sets, there's not much reason to run that trial again, but you'll come back to PvP time and time again. Right now, they've lost a lot of that population.

So, nothing will help until they make the game at least a bit harder, realize they've made bad combat decisions and revert them, and stop making poor choices right now.

By the way, the new difficulty system is bad too, because it simply shuts up the people who wanted harder content. "You wanted harder content? Now you have it!", but it does not solve the problem - content should be harder for everybody by default, so it would keep people playing for longer. Also, this feature with difficulty works only until SOMEONE FROM NORMAL DIFFICULTY RANDOMLY COMES IN AND KILLS A BOSS IN ONE SECOND, WHILE THEY WERE AIMING FOR A REAL CHALLENGE. You'll get a new wave of complaints about others ruining hard content, plus you'll create a legitimate way to abuse the system and level up friends (or strangers for gold) much faster. And I can't believe the developers said on stream they're aware of this and still let it go live. OK, I'm going to abuse it 100%! I plan to create new characters in the future, and this will make leveling faster.

Haki_7 wrote: »

But isn't what you're asking for already included in all of my posts?

No. I don't see your name in any of the images. I don't even know if those are your games.

Please post clear results of your own performance while playing for clearly weak teams. This will allow us to more meaningfully engage you regarding 8v4 bullying in 3s.

Here is one where I prevented my team from being bullied. Green was particularly sweaty, Red was still BGs regulars, my performance made sure Red stayed targeted.


Competency translates across formats. Nobody is good at one but bad at the other. My healing numbers were deflated because the game doesn't track cross shielding.


@Haki_7 @Moonspawn this is relevant because your declaration of matches being "unwinnable" could simply be a skill issue. Demonstrate that you hold your own on a weak team against the 8v4, then there are no such questions, and we can engage in more serious discussion.

imPDA wrote: »

thesarahandcompany wrote: »

The ongoing debate about team sizes and queue splits is missing a larger design issue with Battlegrounds.

Game as a whole has one big design issue - they bet on casual players, making everything easier and more "friendly" (want to play a bash build and scale offensive stats from defensive? OK. Tired of pushing buttons? Here's a one-bar heavy attack build and gear!). But they don't account for the fact that easy games can't hold an audience for long. People just finish all achievements and leave - that's why the population shrank so much that they had to implement starting Battlegrounds even when they're not full. Changing the game to please PvE players while completely sidelining PvP has led to a situation where PvE players jump in, clear everything, and leave until the next update - or sometimes never come back. Meanwhile, PvP players have left due to balance and combat design changes over time. Many left when RW was reworked (twice: the first wave left when it became non-proc, the second when it became proc again. Most players just switched to GH, but a significant portion quit entirely!).

They should focus on things that attract and retain an audience. Interesting but challenging mechanics make you want to find a hardcore PvE guild, join weekly trial groups, and come back at least once a week to attempt a trifecta. It used to take a month or more to master some trials; now I can join any mid-tier guild, bring a couple of friends for key positions like heals and tanks and pass it first try.

PvP has gotten some attention, but I can't take Vengeance seriously, nor the DK class rework from a PvP perspective - they're mostly unwanted and mediocre. There are good decisions and bad ones, but they're not consistent across the whole rework. It feels like the person responsible made random changes, and half turned out well while half turned out poorly.

PvP players constantly return to the game - they could provide a solid baseline online population because there's no end to Cyrodiil or Battlegrounds. Once you get a trifecta and all the gear sets, there's not much reason to run that trial again, but you'll come back to PvP time and time again. Right now, they've lost a lot of that population.

So, nothing will help until they make the game at least a bit harder, realize they've made bad combat decisions and revert them, and stop making poor choices right now.

By the way, the new difficulty system is bad too, because it simply shuts up the people who wanted harder content. "You wanted harder content? Now you have it!", but it does not solve the problem - content should be harder for everybody by default, so it would keep people playing for longer. Also, this feature with difficulty works only until SOMEONE FROM NORMAL DIFFICULTY RANDOMLY COMES IN AND KILLS A BOSS IN ONE SECOND, WHILE THEY WERE AIMING FOR A REAL CHALLENGE. You'll get a new wave of complaints about others ruining hard content, plus you'll create a legitimate way to abuse the system and level up friends (or strangers for gold) much faster. And I can't believe the developers said on stream they're aware of this and still let it go live. OK, I'm going to abuse it 100%! I plan to create new characters in the future, and this will make leveling faster.

Agreed. The mechanics are a major problem. I opened a post on the forms to specifically talk about core combat mechanics and many of the problems with them.

It’s not that we need “hard” game play content it’s that we need “challenging” gameplay content .. the difference being is that challenges require strategy and mastery of technique as well as skills and mechanics that behave with relativity and quality … Hard content is just indiscriminate difficulty for no real reason. Thats content that feels taped together rather than designed with interactivity in mind.

Some content is well thought out and requires coordination and has identifiable skill checks that when all are played well the player has a challenge and accomplishment. But other content has mechanics that are so questionably poor it’s almost as if they grabbed random game elements and just patched them together to make a pierce of content and fed it to us.

I’ve said it a million times, it’s one reason why we see the same skills used over and over again in PvP … it’s not just their scaling but it’s also the mechanics behind them.

Haki_7 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right now though the system is setup to FORCE smurfing, they need a simple system to split up the combat veterans and the noobs to make matches more fair.

@MincMincMinc How can this ever be possible, considering the matchmaking needs to work around the clock, 7 days a week?

Again you are jumping the gun. The game needs to properly rank players before we can even talk about how to split up matches. Its not that hard you take your pool of players and rank them properly.....then you pair up the highers together and the lowers together. THEN we can talk about how to split up teams ingame so we dont run into these scenarios where one team has 3 players going 30/0........I am not saying splitting up teams isnt important, what I am saying is that we need to focus on what zos has to implement FIRST. Then after they make a functional MMR system we would need to push for better team splitting. It is far easier to get zos's attention if we are all on the same page pushing for a better MMR system.

Its nothing secret, but zos prioritized giving out a participation trophy over an actual functional MMR. They wanted everyone to be able to see themselves on the leaderboard for a chance, instead of making a functional system to properly rank people.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right now though the system is setup to FORCE smurfing, they need a simple system to split up the combat veterans and the noobs to make matches more fair.

@MincMincMinc How can this ever be possible, considering the matchmaking needs to work around the clock, 7 days a week?

Again you are jumping the gun. The game needs to properly rank players before we can even talk about how to split up matches. Its not that hard you take your pool of players and rank them properly.....then you pair up the highers together and the lowers together. THEN we can talk about how to split up teams ingame so we dont run into these scenarios where one team has 3 players going 30/0........I am not saying splitting up teams isnt important, what I am saying is that we need to focus on what zos has to implement FIRST. Then after they make a functional MMR system we would need to push for better team splitting. It is far easier to get zos's attention if we are all on the same page pushing for a better MMR system.

Its nothing secret, but zos prioritized giving out a participation trophy over an actual functional MMR. They wanted everyone to be able to see themselves on the leaderboard for a chance, instead of making a functional system to properly rank people.

This makes sense.

But my concern is that this works in the immediate short term but I have long term questions.

If we sort by KDA then we immediately get experienced vs Experienced and we also get Noob vs Noob.

Now, after some amount of time you’re going to have players in the Experienced group who’s metrics also resemble those in the Noob group; since the gameplay will be of players with more similar outcome.

This creates a problem where Noob players can be matched with Experienced players. Even though a Noob player has similar metrics it’s because they’re with like players, not necessarily because they’re due to be matched with veterans.

This means we end up with an endlessly yo-yo group of players who’s KDA stats see them placed with the experienced players until those experienced players slap them around enough to cause their KDA to drop them back down with more like-skilled players and vice versa.

It’s a continuous feed of lower experienced players being systemically fed to more experienced players on a rotating basis.

If we don’t have a method of tiered progression then there’s nothing to stop lesser experienced players who do well against their own experience base to be thrown to the proverbial wolves.

In a well mechanically set BG scenario this would be fine because it would represent a teaching element of sorts, but in the current state of the crit meta with limited counter play I don’t see us having that same outcome.

I do agree that MMR should not be reset but what I think we also need is a buffer from having noobs or less experienced players who improve metrics from being shot up above their weight class so to speak.

Since we’re talking about an MMR that wouldn’t reset are we also talking about total, aggregate values of KDA rather than just averages, which I believe we have now? Because if that’s the case then I think there’s a way that we could sort players by KDA on a per match context first then sub sort based on total KDA lifetime which should, in theory, enable players to elevate more progressively? Does that sound right?

That’s not overly complicated and the data already exists to support that.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right now though the system is setup to FORCE smurfing, they need a simple system to split up the combat veterans and the noobs to make matches more fair.

@MincMincMinc How can this ever be possible, considering the matchmaking needs to work around the clock, 7 days a week?

Again you are jumping the gun. The game needs to properly rank players before we can even talk about how to split up matches. Its not that hard you take your pool of players and rank them properly.....then you pair up the highers together and the lowers together. THEN we can talk about how to split up teams ingame so we dont run into these scenarios where one team has 3 players going 30/0........I am not saying splitting up teams isnt important, what I am saying is that we need to focus on what zos has to implement FIRST. Then after they make a functional MMR system we would need to push for better team splitting. It is far easier to get zos's attention if we are all on the same page pushing for a better MMR system.

Its nothing secret, but zos prioritized giving out a participation trophy over an actual functional MMR. They wanted everyone to be able to see themselves on the leaderboard for a chance, instead of making a functional system to properly rank people.

This makes sense.

But my concern is that this works in the immediate short term but I have long term questions.

If we sort by KDA then we immediately get experienced vs Experienced and we also get Noob vs Noob.

Now, after some amount of time you’re going to have players in the Experienced group who’s metrics also resemble those in the Noob group; since the gameplay will be of players with more similar outcome.

This creates a problem where Noob players can be matched with Experienced players. Even though a Noob player has similar metrics it’s because they’re with like players, not necessarily because they’re due to be matched with veterans.

This means we end up with an endlessly yo-yo group of players who’s KDA stats see them placed with the experienced players until those experienced players slap them around enough to cause their KDA to drop them back down with more like-skilled players and vice versa.

Well you are assuming there is only two brackets here that are split and rejoined down the line. This is not correct as there would be multiple brackets ongoing that players can move up and down all the time. Lets think on a scale of 1 to 10 skill wise. If noobs are 1 and vets are 10. If said low tier 1 players fight enough and have better kda then they move up to tier 2. If their KDA is still better, they eventually move up to tier 3. At some point their KDA reaches an average where some matches they go up slightly, and others they go down slightly leaving them at a certain tier.

Its a ladder, not a step stool so to speak. Look at any other MMR structure where you have bronze/silver/gold/plat......etc. These are all the brackets and individually if you have enough of a player base you would have bronze 1 to bronze 5.

Some other games simply have the ELO score where you move up or down. Then the matchmaking service tries to pair similar elo score.

Personally I think the ladder rank system is better for an MMO type game where you want titles, unlockables, and other things to showboat to your friends. I mean a massive portion of MOBA players simply get addicted because they want their loading screen banner a certain color.

Wouldn’t we still need another data point in order to establish progression?

Is it that we’d be looking at the KDA averaged over all lifetime matches played or are we talking an aggregate running total of all K’s D’s & A’s collectively?

Meaning that a level 1 noob player with 50/22/73 couldn’t be matched against a level 7 intermediate with 832/126/923? Something like that?

If we have that then a level 1 noob won’t ever progress to a higher tier unless players that are already in those higher tiers take a break from playing, enabling the lower tier players cumulative total to “catch up”.

If we do a KDA averaged over all BG matches played then we run the risk of a noob tier 1 averaging out a similar KDA average as a level 7 intermediate and thus a mis match.

I agree that we want a progression system to MMR, I’m also with you on any form of MMR not resetting.

How are we looking at KDA to make the tiers? It’s almost like we have to have some other data point, one to establish an overall skill basis and one to then rank the population as well as facilitate progression.

Imo you should make the bgs 5v5 and force each team to

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right now though the system is setup to FORCE smurfing, they need a simple system to split up the combat veterans and the noobs to make matches more fair.

@MincMincMinc How can this ever be possible, considering the matchmaking needs to work around the clock, 7 days a week?

Again you are jumping the gun. The game needs to properly rank players before we can even talk about how to split up matches. Its not that hard you take your pool of players and rank them properly.....then you pair up the highers together and the lowers together. THEN we can talk about how to split up teams ingame so we dont run into these scenarios where one team has 3 players going 30/0........I am not saying splitting up teams isnt important, what I am saying is that we need to focus on what zos has to implement FIRST. Then after they make a functional MMR system we would need to push for better team splitting. It is far easier to get zos's attention if we are all on the same page pushing for a better MMR system.

Its nothing secret, but zos prioritized giving out a participation trophy over an actual functional MMR. They wanted everyone to be able to see themselves on the leaderboard for a chance, instead of making a functional system to properly rank people.

This makes sense.

But my concern is that this works in the immediate short term but I have long term questions.

If we sort by KDA then we immediately get experienced vs Experienced and we also get Noob vs Noob.

Now, after some amount of time you’re going to have players in the Experienced group who’s metrics also resemble those in the Noob group; since the gameplay will be of players with more similar outcome.

This creates a problem where Noob players can be matched with Experienced players. Even though a Noob player has similar metrics it’s because they’re with like players, not necessarily because they’re due to be matched with veterans.

This means we end up with an endlessly yo-yo group of players who’s KDA stats see them placed with the experienced players until those experienced players slap them around enough to cause their KDA to drop them back down with more like-skilled players and vice versa.

Well you are assuming there is only two brackets here that are split and rejoined down the line. This is not correct as there would be multiple brackets ongoing that players can move up and down all the time. Lets think on a scale of 1 to 10 skill wise. If noobs are 1 and vets are 10. If said low tier 1 players fight enough and have better kda then they move up to tier 2. If their KDA is still better, they eventually move up to tier 3. At some point their KDA reaches an average where some matches they go up slightly, and others they go down slightly leaving them at a certain tier.

Its a ladder, not a step stool so to speak. Look at any other MMR structure where you have bronze/silver/gold/plat......etc. These are all the brackets and individually if you have enough of a player base you would have bronze 1 to bronze 5.

Some other games simply have the ELO score where you move up or down. Then the matchmaking service tries to pair similar elo score.

Personally I think the ladder rank system is better for an MMO type game where you want titles, unlockables, and other things to showboat to your friends. I mean a massive portion of MOBA players simply get addicted because they want their loading screen banner a certain color.

Wouldn’t we still need another data point in order to establish progression?

Is it that we’d be looking at the KDA averaged over all lifetime matches played or are we talking an aggregate running total of all K’s D’s & A’s collectively?

Meaning that a level 1 noob player with 50/22/73 couldn’t be matched against a level 7 intermediate with 832/126/923? Something like that?

If we have that then a level 1 noob won’t ever progress to a higher tier unless players that are already in those higher tiers take a break from playing, enabling the lower tier players cumulative total to “catch up”.

If we do a KDA averaged over all BG matches played then we run the risk of a noob tier 1 averaging out a similar KDA average as a level 7 intermediate and thus a mis match.

I agree that we want a progression system to MMR, I’m also with you on any form of MMR not resetting.

How are we looking at KDA to make the tiers? It’s almost like we have to have some other data point, one to establish an overall skill basis and one to then rank the population as well as facilitate progression.

Well you make an MMR number or elo, whatever you want to call it. Then each match you gain a certain amount depending on whether you had a high KDA or low KDA. You are not just using a KDA average as the actual MMR number.

Then you can do things later on like if a match has a wide MMR spread because it is off hours, you can make a match worth less MMR points. So say a noob gets into a much higher MMR match, they wont risk losing heavily because they joined lower than the average MMR.

i agree with you mostly, ill only add that i think gaining MMR purely based on KDR shuts down alot of support players and builds so we would have to find a way to weight damage and healing done into the equation as well. like for example i play alot of pressure dk and stamsorc and while i dont get alot of kills i do contribute an overwhelming amount of damage and cc setup for my teammates with big burst ultimate's, so at the end of the game ill have 1 kill but 4 mill damage and i think that should count for something

personally i think you should go the route of having bronze - grandmaster ranks as its just cleaner than looking at 2200 elo or whatever like when you play WOW, also it just feels cooler to be able to say your rank and have a little badge or title that goes with it. at the end of the day pvp is all about ego and showing off that your better at pressing buttons and have bigger iq builds is 70% of the reason most of us are here.

xylena wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

But isn't what you're asking for already included in all of my posts?

No.

But it is. If you carefully examine the scoreboards, you'll realize I've been underlining the matches that were impossible to win.

Chaosball 1 and 2, no chance of losing. Pointless staring contests with ball carriers:
Crazy King, no chance of losing. We did because the first and third critical flaws of 2-sided dictate that the spawncamping of newcomers must take precedence over all things:
Deathmatch 1, no chance of losing:
Deathmatch 2, no chance of winning. Spawncamping and teammates promptly giving up after dying once:
Domination, no chance of losing:
Relic, no chance of losing:
Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 144: Waiting 18 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

cuddles_with_wroble wrote: »

Imo you should make the bgs 5v5 and force each team to

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right now though the system is setup to FORCE smurfing, they need a simple system to split up the combat veterans and the noobs to make matches more fair.

@MincMincMinc How can this ever be possible, considering the matchmaking needs to work around the clock, 7 days a week?

Again you are jumping the gun. The game needs to properly rank players before we can even talk about how to split up matches. Its not that hard you take your pool of players and rank them properly.....then you pair up the highers together and the lowers together. THEN we can talk about how to split up teams ingame so we dont run into these scenarios where one team has 3 players going 30/0........I am not saying splitting up teams isnt important, what I am saying is that we need to focus on what zos has to implement FIRST. Then after they make a functional MMR system we would need to push for better team splitting. It is far easier to get zos's attention if we are all on the same page pushing for a better MMR system.

Its nothing secret, but zos prioritized giving out a participation trophy over an actual functional MMR. They wanted everyone to be able to see themselves on the leaderboard for a chance, instead of making a functional system to properly rank people.

This makes sense.

But my concern is that this works in the immediate short term but I have long term questions.

If we sort by KDA then we immediately get experienced vs Experienced and we also get Noob vs Noob.

Now, after some amount of time you’re going to have players in the Experienced group who’s metrics also resemble those in the Noob group; since the gameplay will be of players with more similar outcome.

This creates a problem where Noob players can be matched with Experienced players. Even though a Noob player has similar metrics it’s because they’re with like players, not necessarily because they’re due to be matched with veterans.

This means we end up with an endlessly yo-yo group of players who’s KDA stats see them placed with the experienced players until those experienced players slap them around enough to cause their KDA to drop them back down with more like-skilled players and vice versa.

Well you are assuming there is only two brackets here that are split and rejoined down the line. This is not correct as there would be multiple brackets ongoing that players can move up and down all the time. Lets think on a scale of 1 to 10 skill wise. If noobs are 1 and vets are 10. If said low tier 1 players fight enough and have better kda then they move up to tier 2. If their KDA is still better, they eventually move up to tier 3. At some point their KDA reaches an average where some matches they go up slightly, and others they go down slightly leaving them at a certain tier.

Its a ladder, not a step stool so to speak. Look at any other MMR structure where you have bronze/silver/gold/plat......etc. These are all the brackets and individually if you have enough of a player base you would have bronze 1 to bronze 5.

Some other games simply have the ELO score where you move up or down. Then the matchmaking service tries to pair similar elo score.

Personally I think the ladder rank system is better for an MMO type game where you want titles, unlockables, and other things to showboat to your friends. I mean a massive portion of MOBA players simply get addicted because they want their loading screen banner a certain color.

Wouldn’t we still need another data point in order to establish progression?

Is it that we’d be looking at the KDA averaged over all lifetime matches played or are we talking an aggregate running total of all K’s D’s & A’s collectively?

Meaning that a level 1 noob player with 50/22/73 couldn’t be matched against a level 7 intermediate with 832/126/923? Something like that?

If we have that then a level 1 noob won’t ever progress to a higher tier unless players that are already in those higher tiers take a break from playing, enabling the lower tier players cumulative total to “catch up”.

If we do a KDA averaged over all BG matches played then we run the risk of a noob tier 1 averaging out a similar KDA average as a level 7 intermediate and thus a mis match.

I agree that we want a progression system to MMR, I’m also with you on any form of MMR not resetting.

How are we looking at KDA to make the tiers? It’s almost like we have to have some other data point, one to establish an overall skill basis and one to then rank the population as well as facilitate progression.

Well you make an MMR number or elo, whatever you want to call it. Then each match you gain a certain amount depending on whether you had a high KDA or low KDA. You are not just using a KDA average as the actual MMR number.

Then you can do things later on like if a match has a wide MMR spread because it is off hours, you can make a match worth less MMR points. So say a noob gets into a much higher MMR match, they wont risk losing heavily because they joined lower than the average MMR.

i agree with you mostly, ill only add that i think gaining MMR purely based on KDR shuts down alot of support players and builds so we would have to find a way to weight damage and healing done into the equation as well. like for example i play alot of pressure dk and stamsorc and while i dont get alot of kills i do contribute an overwhelming amount of damage and cc setup for my teammates with big burst ultimate's, so at the end of the game ill have 1 kill but 4 mill damage and i think that should count for something

personally i think you should go the route of having bronze - grandmaster ranks as its just cleaner than looking at 2200 elo or whatever like when you play WOW, also it just feels cooler to be able to say your rank and have a little badge or title that goes with it. at the end of the day pvp is all about ego and showing off that your better at pressing buttons and have bigger iq builds is 70% of the reason most of us are here.

Support builds would be counted by scoring high assists. Generally a good support build would 2x or 3x the top dps's kills. You can also do something for healers where if you do above the average heals in the game, your assists could be weighed more.

However keep in mind out of every 8v8 bg game maybe we see one support player. I'd bet on average there are 10:1 DPS to support/heals. Not that they should be disregarded, but primarily the focus will always be the other 90% of the population. I think the assists and weight mechanic above would let you balance them out more though.

---

Now I say we should focus on KDA, but thats mainly because MMR is so broken objective points are disregarded most matches makign them un-usable. If you remember older BGs, once you got into pure high mmr matches you had more people doing objectives during fair matches because it breaks up the stalemates. So once we make matches more fairly balanced.....then we can start talking about bringing in objective score to affect MMR.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Haki_7 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right now though the system is setup to FORCE smurfing, they need a simple system to split up the combat veterans and the noobs to make matches more fair.

@MincMincMinc How can this ever be possible, considering the matchmaking needs to work around the clock, 7 days a week?

Again you are jumping the gun. The game needs to properly rank players before we can even talk about how to split up matches. Its not that hard you take your pool of players and rank them properly.....then you pair up the highers together and the lowers together. THEN we can talk about how to split up teams ingame so we dont run into these scenarios where one team has 3 players going 30/0........I am not saying splitting up teams isnt important, what I am saying is that we need to focus on what zos has to implement FIRST. Then after they make a functional MMR system we would need to push for better team splitting. It is far easier to get zos's attention if we are all on the same page pushing for a better MMR system.

Its nothing secret, but zos prioritized giving out a participation trophy over an actual functional MMR. They wanted everyone to be able to see themselves on the leaderboard for a chance, instead of making a functional system to properly rank people.

This makes sense.

But my concern is that this works in the immediate short term but I have long term questions.

If we sort by KDA then we immediately get experienced vs Experienced and we also get Noob vs Noob.

Now, after some amount of time you’re going to have players in the Experienced group who’s metrics also resemble those in the Noob group; since the gameplay will be of players with more similar outcome.

This creates a problem where Noob players can be matched with Experienced players. Even though a Noob player has similar metrics it’s because they’re with like players, not necessarily because they’re due to be matched with veterans.

This means we end up with an endlessly yo-yo group of players who’s KDA stats see them placed with the experienced players until those experienced players slap them around enough to cause their KDA to drop them back down with more like-skilled players and vice versa.

Well you are assuming there is only two brackets here that are split and rejoined down the line. This is not correct as there would be multiple brackets ongoing that players can move up and down all the time. Lets think on a scale of 1 to 10 skill wise. If noobs are 1 and vets are 10. If said low tier 1 players fight enough and have better kda then they move up to tier 2. If their KDA is still better, they eventually move up to tier 3. At some point their KDA reaches an average where some matches they go up slightly, and others they go down slightly leaving them at a certain tier.

Its a ladder, not a step stool so to speak. Look at any other MMR structure where you have bronze/silver/gold/plat......etc. These are all the brackets and individually if you have enough of a player base you would have bronze 1 to bronze 5.

Some other games simply have the ELO score where you move up or down. Then the matchmaking service tries to pair similar elo score.

Personally I think the ladder rank system is better for an MMO type game where you want titles, unlockables, and other things to showboat to your friends. I mean a massive portion of MOBA players simply get addicted because they want their loading screen banner a certain color.

Wouldn’t we still need another data point in order to establish progression?

Is it that we’d be looking at the KDA averaged over all lifetime matches played or are we talking an aggregate running total of all K’s D’s & A’s collectively?

Meaning that a level 1 noob player with 50/22/73 couldn’t be matched against a level 7 intermediate with 832/126/923? Something like that?

If we have that then a level 1 noob won’t ever progress to a higher tier unless players that are already in those higher tiers take a break from playing, enabling the lower tier players cumulative total to “catch up”.

If we do a KDA averaged over all BG matches played then we run the risk of a noob tier 1 averaging out a similar KDA average as a level 7 intermediate and thus a mis match.

I agree that we want a progression system to MMR, I’m also with you on any form of MMR not resetting.

How are we looking at KDA to make the tiers? It’s almost like we have to have some other data point, one to establish an overall skill basis and one to then rank the population as well as facilitate progression.

Well you make an MMR number or elo, whatever you want to call it. Then each match you gain a certain amount depending on whether you had a high KDA or low KDA. You are not just using a KDA average as the actual MMR number.

Then you can do things later on like if a match has a wide MMR spread because it is off hours, you can make a match worth less MMR points. So say a noob gets into a much higher MMR match, they wont risk losing heavily because they joined lower than the average MMR.

1. Building a meaningful ELO/MMR system is not trivial work.
2. Even if it existed tomorrow, it wouldn’t solve the core Battleground problem.
3. As MMR increases, the pool of similarly skilled players shrinks — which inevitably means longer queue times for the most engaged PvP players.

That tradeoff can be worth it — but only in game populations, environments, and modes that are designed to support competitive matchmaking.

Battlegrounds currently aren’t that sis. Teams are unstable. Objectives are predictable. There are basic clear win conditions that fighting over doesn't really impact the outcome all that much. The only randomness/variance right now is your teammate variance.

ESO BGs, as they are now, are built around chaotic, short-form, multi-team modes where avoiding fights or, disincentivizing them, is often the optimal strategy. In that environment, matchmaking accuracy has limited impact because the mode incentives themselves undermine competitive integrity.

You can’t bolt an ELO/MMR system onto a design that doesn’t meaningfully benefit from it.

I think that, right now, the KDA approach, with metric factored in for support roles, is probably our best “realistic” shot when it comes to MMR in the short term. Someone here recently brought up support roles and that’s a really good point because I hadn’t though about that.

I do maintain that although there is definitely an issue where unskilled players end up against veterans in PvP there is also a swing with the current meta.

It used to be that despite there always having been a meta build, the current crit has two unique factors: 1) the disparity between the crit meta full potential versus the next lowest capable build is likely larger than its ever been & 2) the current crit is a larger enabler of lower skill ceiling player performance due to reduced counterplay.

Let’s not pretend that all of us aren’t in BGs watching gaggles of players be rewarded with KDA for spamming the same skills over and over.

The population of players who are jumping on board the meta builds has grown in the months since subclassing and now one of the things that MMR will struggle with no matter what is separating who is a skilled player versus who is a mechanical benefactor.

Truth be told, it near as doesn’t matter. If we sort players based on outcome then we’re going to lump the lower skill spammers in with the experienced vets, which is perfectly fine.

As many have pointed out there’s plenty of from for improvement with BGs, that includes both MMR & combat mechanics. Personally, I don’t think we have any realistic shot of talking about needed mechanical changes until after ZoS completes the class refreshes so until that time we definitely need something to level the field.

Now, I’ve also said this 100 times now and I’ll die on this hill, but I also maintain that if the devs would install a hard cap on crit output modifiers then the landscape of everything in BGs would change (for the better) immediately.

We would still have a discussion about MMR but the KDA stats across the board would start to align more with skill base rather than bad mechanics which I believe will help reinforce an MMR adjustment like what we’re talking about. Such a change to crit would be insanely easy and why the Devs haven’t addressed this is beyond me. This problem couldn’t be more evident if it were a Sphere in Las Vegas.

For the here & now a KDA sorting that also combines total output (this would include damage or healing) would cover the lions share of roles. The only metric I’m not sure how to rank are Tanks and while I know they’re not as common in PvP they do play and they do contribute, especially in certain game types.

Moonspawn wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

NxJoeyD wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

MMR rank reset has to be removed or replaced

We do not have the total population for this.

Perhaps after Crossplay, but honestly even then if no other content releases beside it. Adjusted players do not deserve to be stuck in queue for 2 hours because other players refuse to learn counterplay.

I’ve been in 4v4 Team Deathmatch games where we’ve lost the first round, and then realizing what the problem was, I threw on Mass Hysteria or Turn Evil, made a few callouts, completely changed the trajectory.

Un-winnable games are nearly non-existent in Solo queue, as the likelihood of having 2 good players on the other team are incredibly low without MMR forcing them all into a lobby together.

I agree there’s lots of situations where players don’t pay attention to proper counterplay so a BG is lost but to say non winnable games are nearly non existent is not correct at all.

The state of mechanics in BGs has brought some of the most non-counterplay mechanics ever. Crit, both damage and healing, there’s no viable counterplay. Impen + Rally Cry isn’t enough to ensure a player isn’t at max crit and that’s a lot of resource to commit. Plus, in order for RC to proc it requires a crit so unless you’re also a crit build that’s not even reliable.

There’s still plenty of unwinable matches now that subclassing has given unskilled players access to mechanics and rewarded them for spamming.

You’ve gotta be really unlucky to land an un-winnable lobby against 2 heal tanks in Domination, or 3 good players on the other team in a Solo-Queue setting.

You don’t have to have heal tanks in BGs anymore. All of your crit DPS are full self healers now, thanks to subclassing.

As for actual healers, they’re inconsistent and I don’t blame them. So many crit DPS run self sustain that they don’t support their healer so we see fewer healers queue up than we used to.

It used to be that class separation made it so that if one wanted to heal or deal damage there was a resource barrier to doing one or the other, but that isn’t the case anymore; a high crit DPS can simultaneously slap a tank with a 25k Merciless as well as fully heal in one burst, all with battle spirit active.

If you toss a gaggle of those into a BG you’re going to have no real options for counterplay because there’s not enough sources in the game to offset their modifiers.

Okay I let the first one fly, but this is now the second time that you’ve blamed Subclassing for people healing well on builds that do high damage.

This is not new.

People have been suggesting a change to heal scaling for a long time, far longer than one year. 😂

We were running 40k health Polar Wind unkillable MagDens that slap with burst due to Shalks and shred your health bar using Status Effects, and Sorcerers flying around with 30k in wards on top of a burst heal you got from casting the skill completely immune to burst and DoTs while throwing out ridiculous oppressive damage. Coagulating Blood was and still is the strongest self heal in the game… and it scales off of weapon/spell damage, and you have Healthy Offering, which is the highest scaling burst heal other than Coag. Templar doesn’t even have to blink and they are back to full health. Arcanist wards better than Sorcerer and Necromancer is buried out back.

All of those things above; are still true today.

It gets really exhausting watching misinformation and blaming spread so rampantly by people unintentionally due to a bias.

If you don’t like the system, then just say so. No need to create reasons to dislike it, or to co-opt threads that have nothing to do with it to push an agenda.

Subclassing is a huge contributor to abusive healing.

The reason is because Subclassing gave builds access to mechanics and scaling that they were never intended to have access to.

Sorc shields have always been a pain point but Sorc DPS mechanical output was limited, it wasn’t as dynamic as, say, a NB; therefore Sorc’s being a higher utility contributor made sense. But even Sorc shields got a proper nerf that greatly reduced the heal factor, which I agree it needed.

Conversely, NBs had healing that could scale but was far more conditional, those limited conditions suited their build, Mark Target, for example, isn’t a burst-on-command heal so it meant although it was capable of a powerful burst; it was mechanically limited and required more thoughtful use.

Subclassing changed all of that. Not only did it enable higher modifier scaling but it also gave access to heals that function in ways that remove the combat strategy component and esentally provide get out of jail free cards.

That’s not misinformation that’s fact. The Devs have agreed that Subclassing created a severe imbalance and healing is just one factor.

Base heal scaling isn’t my issue, my issue is the fact that players can critically self heal and can do so with such significant frequency and degree that they don’t have to really consider the risk vs reward prospect of their actions. That aspect was not commonplace in BGs prior to subclassing. We had some strong self heals but nothing like this, and even the strong self heals that were out there had output limitations by class that, although, weren’t perfectly balanced, they weren’t this bad.

Healing skills were developed with the logic that their use case would be limited both complementary and mechanically by the scope of the class they were placed in. Subclassing had the dual impact of removing those limits and enabling higher critical scaling.

This is really an easy fix, simply make critical a hard cap. Full stop. No player would be able to allocate values above the hard cap which would make the existing counter play elements viable again. This would also still leave healing skills intact to support builds. Yes, some will out perform others but they won’t have the overreaching impact they have now.

This critical hard cap you speak of. Are you sure there isn't one already in place?

Yep, I’m sure.

Crit scaling currently works like resistances, there’s a soft cap whereby the game only recognizes the scale up to the soft cap but players can allocate resource above that. Opponents can apply debuff reductions that affect a players values but just like tanks can allocate resistance so far over the soft cap that even with every form of breach they’re still at max 33k.

The same is now more easily attainable for Crit because subclassing gave access to more skills and passives that dial up Crit scaling even farther.

Even with 7 pieces of Impen & Rally Cry it’s still not enough to counter players Crit scaling to at or near max which means proper counter play is out the window.

Crit builds are rewarded for spamming and for playing without an actual sense of risk vs reward combat. This is why we’re seeing the same skills abused over and over … because they not only scale to sky high Crit values but mechanically they also perform blisteringly fast and provide no telegraph so players can spam these skills indiscriminately all while crit burst healing and HoT with critical ticks. .. Subclassing turned “critical” into “usual”.

Crit scaling needs a hard cap.

I don't know @Radiate77 . @NxJoeyD might be onto something.

Is there a hidden purpose to critical damage/healing in PvP, other than adding an extra layer of RNG that only widens the gap between newcomers and PvPers? Would Battlegrounds, and all forms of pvp, be easier to balance if crit was pve only?

I would rather Critical in general just be toned back.

Crit is a noob trap, for those who don’t understand it, it tanks their build, but for those who do, it becomes the ONLY option irregardless of content.

Once upon a time wards could not be Crit, and they lasted much longer than 6 seconds. Perhaps it’s time we revisited this rock-paper-scissors concept.

Just look at Igneous Shield and Sun Shield, both skills are still balanced around the concept that they can not be crit.

@Radiate77 … yes, exactly!

All I’m asking for is a hard cap on the crit modifier & frequency. We can still have builds that critically strike, we can still have builds that focus on critical damage … we just wouldn’t have scaling & frequency that exceeds existing counterplay and rewards a lack of combat strategy.

@Moonspawn

In the case of Crit; it’s not “a” single skill or “a single skill line”, it has a game wide impact that is now able to reach values not possible before.

My personal view on Crit is that it is definitely an attribute that a player can and should be able to modify, but up to a limit. The moment that critical becomes persistent then it’s no longer “critical” it turns into “usual”; and that undermines the entire idea of a “critical strike”.

Part of the idea of Battle Spirit was to prevent what players are, effectively, able to do now, mitigate excessive damage via scaled self healing. Crit in the state that it currently is in will basically see the Crit build negating the effects of Battle Spirit to, practically, achieve non-Battle Spirit base level self healing whilst everyone else has to live with the 50% reduction.

So, yes, there’s a purpose to critical damage in PvP, and if the Devs hard cap the scaling and frequency then I don’t have an issue with self healing being able to crit either, it’s just that it shouldn’t be able to scale so high and so frequently.

If the only solution is labeling players with a ranking system created for people they couldn't possibly compete against, I'd say there isn't a future.
The general consensus as is always the case with PvP is, we need more people. Just not THOSE people. Or the scary NEW people (they're terrifying aren't they).

New players are not irrelevant and you actually have to pay them some kindness if there is any kind of future for battlegrounds. Or PvP in general for that matter. Yes, Im a ten year player and yes I still PvP. I dont know how much longer I will either and many others like me have quit. Especially since subclass.

People like me are tired of the same old song. We don't like healing, we dont like damage shields, we dont like class mastery, we dont like ultimate. This needs nerfed, that needs changed, this shouldn't be allowed, ect ect and on and on. It never ends. As soon as they change one thing, next week it'll be something else.

The players many of you describe in these forums who are inadequate, new, not in the meta, not good enough or whatever way you want to categorize them (or rank them which is the same thing) end up in my guilds. And a lot of others with people who quit PvP. There are a lot more of them than you think. They understand you don't have time for them. They get that you dont want them there. They get 1 shotted multiple times and decide they hate PvP. They've made their mind up they dont want to play with you either. If you label them into some ridiculous category after that happens, they'll leave the game, not just PvP. There is entirely way too much DPS in PvP. The meta is so overpowered it shouldn't even be allowed in there. It isnt even remotely close to being fair.

If you want true balance in PvP, everyone has to have the same abilities and stats for each role. If you're truly that good, you will still be at the top when its a totally fair play system. Put yourselves into a BG with totally even skills, stats, gear and 50 strangler plants. Who will you blame then, the strangler plants?

BG should be a place where everyone can play. Together. That includes a mixture of skill levels. Not just the top 5%. Grouping is random so everyone can participate. Not just the top 5%. That's currently about the only thing that entices others to even do BG is the fact there exists a chance they might actually be able to win. Maybe add some more factors of chance to draw people in, even if it is strangler plants.
If I que for ten BG matches with what is going on over there right now, all im going to end up with is the same people over and over again because everyone else got frustrated and quit. Or they've tried it before and aren't coming back. Its boring. Ball groups, exploits and toxic attitudes have driven players away. PvP has a terrible reputation right now. The population is low there for a reason. The only joy that remains in battlegrounds are the funny things that can still happen there. One of the new guildies at 300cp gets the killing blow on a 2400cp by accident. Someone kills 3 people but forgets to pick up the ball (its true, I've seen it). Things like that are the only fun left. Chance is a big factor in having fun. Everything isn't always about scoreboard and titles. Or DPS. I would like to see BG lean more into the direction of fun instead of separation or division. If people can actually have a laugh in there instead of a bad time, chances are they're going to come back.

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

If the only solution is labeling players with a ranking system created for people they couldn't possibly compete against, I'd say there isn't a future.
The general consensus as is always the case with PvP is, we need more people. Just not THOSE people. Or the scary NEW people (they're terrifying aren't they).

New players are not irrelevant and you actually have to pay them some kindness if there is any kind of future for battlegrounds. Or PvP in general for that matter. Yes, Im a ten year player and yes I still PvP. I dont know how much longer I will either and many others like me have quit. Especially since subclass.

People like me are tired of the same old song. We don't like healing, we dont like damage shields, we dont like class mastery, we dont like ultimate. This needs nerfed, that needs changed, this shouldn't be allowed, ect ect and on and on. It never ends. As soon as they change one thing, next week it'll be something else.

The players many of you describe in these forums who are inadequate, new, not in the meta, not good enough or whatever way you want to categorize them (or rank them which is the same thing) end up in my guilds. And a lot of others with people who quit PvP. There are a lot more of them than you think. They understand you don't have time for them. They get that you dont want them there. They get 1 shotted multiple times and decide they hate PvP. They've made their mind up they dont want to play with you either. If you label them into some ridiculous category after that happens, they'll leave the game, not just PvP. There is entirely way too much DPS in PvP. The meta is so overpowered it shouldn't even be allowed in there. It isnt even remotely close to being fair.

If you want true balance in PvP, everyone has to have the same abilities and stats for each role. If you're truly that good, you will still be at the top when its a totally fair play system. Put yourselves into a BG with totally even skills, stats, gear and 50 strangler plants. Who will you blame then, the strangler plants?

BG should be a place where everyone can play. Together. That includes a mixture of skill levels. Not just the top 5%. Grouping is random so everyone can participate. Not just the top 5%. That's currently about the only thing that entices others to even do BG is the fact there exists a chance they might actually be able to win. Maybe add some more factors of chance to draw people in, even if it is strangler plants.
If I que for ten BG matches with what is going on over there right now, all im going to end up with is the same people over and over again because everyone else got frustrated and quit. Or they've tried it before and aren't coming back. Its boring. Ball groups, exploits and toxic attitudes have driven players away. PvP has a terrible reputation right now. The population is low there for a reason. The only joy that remains in battlegrounds are the funny things that can still happen there. One of the new guildies at 300cp gets the killing blow on a 2400cp by accident. Someone kills 3 people but forgets to pick up the ball (its true, I've seen it). Things like that are the only fun left. Chance is a big factor in having fun. Everything isn't always about scoreboard and titles. Or DPS. I would like to see BG lean more into the direction of fun instead of separation or division. If people can actually have a laugh in there instead of a bad time, chances are they're going to come back.

I had suggested something like this in the past and I don’t think people understood but I’ll mention it now.

What I had thought about for a long term solution would be a change to Battle Spirit so instead of applying the same base effects to everyone it would be replaced with a “Competitive Index” (CI) system.

Basically, a CI would look at the whole, entirety, of a players build and adjust tooltip values based on the choices they made and the role they’ve chosen for themselves. It’s a balance of performance system.

Players who build more evenly, with an attention to resource allocation wouldn’t see much system adjustment. Conversely, a player that’s built heavily into crit, selected a DPS role, and is slotting multiple self healing might see the CI system reduce their tooltip damage in an effort to balance the build and bring it back in line with the scope of the game.

There’s a lot of room for discussion about how a CI system would apply adjustments and what values would get priority, and that’s all fine. There’s a ton of blueprints for logics like this.

Sports car racing does this so as to prevent any one team from essentially running the field. No two cars are made to be the same, they’re all unique and have different characteristics and the performance balancing applied to each is done so based on each vehicle. In this way the race is determined by the driver and team actions, not simply because one car was faster than the field.

A system like this, while sounding complicated, really isn’t. It’s just numbers.

I think if we’re going to have PvP content whereby all bets are off and all players can choose to have access to any skills and mechanics and combinations of the sort, I personally think that buffs and nerfs to skills make little sense. This is because a skill has variable value now. A skill in the hands of one build might be mechanically game balanced but that same skill in the hands of another build that it was never designed for is a whole other story.

Before subclassing, class skills had class limitations that defined their functionality and use case.

There’s no realistic way anyone could balance each skill for every possible combination of build now with subclassing so I wouldn’t try. Rather, create a single indexing system and apply it to everyone. This way people still get their build diversity, they get their theory crafting, they get high power scales in PvE .. but for PvP players would always have a sense of consequence and consideration for their builds. If they choose to put their proverbial eggs all in the same basket they would not be rewarded for juking around limitations, the CI system would reel them back in and then game match outcomes would be more up to player actions & teamwork.

This is a lofty idea and although I say it can be done (and I believe it can) it’s not an overnight thing. If ever to be considered it would be a major project, one I do not believe the devs would ever take up. And while a CI wouldn’t make every build perfectly balanced it would bring all builds to within a reasonable scope of one another which would mean there would basically be no more meta build, rather, meta players. And because of that I know this idea would never get subscription from a big chuck of the player base.