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Yeah, I've noticed that as well (as have other developers). I suppose it's debateable where "the middle" of the rankings is, but I generally feel it's just before the major point that becomes difficult to get to higher divisions (1700-2100), which is where I see I get most of my defensive attacks. Much lower than 1700 and there's so many people that attacks are much more spread out, because the matchmaking puts you against people around your rank primarily.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaosego888
Think of the spread of players based on VP like a pyramid... there's much less people at the top, so they see more of the same names and get more of the attacks, but the lower in the pyramid you go, the more people there are, and the more diffuse it is.
No worries mate, I've been following your threads very closely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
I don't want to pass judgement prematurely, but there could be plenty of legitimate reasons for that. I'm personally diving into a lot of our leaderboard information to divine all these weird idiosyncrasies in the time where I'm not working on Sacrifice, and I will share whatever information I can with the community (potentially after we've made adjustments if people could exploit the system).Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
Each feature has it's own demands for time and expertise, and while it seems jarring in retrospect, the feature itself seems to make itself very clear what it demands of you if you want to climb, and how much harder it is to get the higher rewards the more you want to climb. The feature hasn't been out for two weeks and both old guard mobile players and people new to asynchronous PVP already have a pretty clear picture of the demands.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
Lets consider some hypothetical scenarios (with some somewhat simplified math, but nonetheless numbers close to what people are reporting)...Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
Lets assume you get attacked 50 times a day on average if you're ranked highly on the leaderboard. That creates a baseline of 350 defenses per week. If we only care about everyone is ranked highly on the leaderboard, then that's fine, and realistically that's what the vast majority of top players have reported both weeks.
But what about people lower on the leaderboard? Is it fair that the game forces them to matchmake against people that could be far out of their league (either strength or ranking) just because they haven't been "attacked enough" on a given day?
What about someone who just started playing mid-week? Maybe they avoided playing PVP for a long time, so they sit around 1000 VP (with thousands of other players who aren't competing). Should they be attacked 350 times per week, just because? Even if we spread the attacks out as evenly as possible, and the average across the entire playerbase (from the top dedicated players doing 300-800 attacks to the literal hundreds of less interested people doing less than 10 a week)... should they be attacked hundreds of times just because?
There's a lot of factors that have gone into the matchmaking, and as I've already noted, we're definitely aware that there's room for improvement. But I don't agree that everyone being attacked as much as everyone else is a logical conclusion, because the results you're looking at is the summary at the end of the week, and a lot of the story in the middle is being left out.
But just to be crystal clear, I definitely agree that improvements can and will be made. Outliers existing at the top of the leaderboard is definitely not intended, and even though they're a minority of top players, I'm nonetheless working on ensuring the spread is more event for the people who are competing at the top.
Specifically on the impact of defenses, though...
(Emphasis mine.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
As I've brought up in the past, we don't want your defense to be a non issue. Maintaining a quality attack record and defense record is something we feel is important to how we want players to approach PVP, and how you as a player approach that (either by staying low then climbing rapidly at the end of the week and/or finding defensive teams that are more likely to confound opponents) is something we want all players to consider, as many already have in various ways. Hell, take people like Gmac, who have pointed out you can creatively spend ironite to compete and get into the top divisions if competing in PVP is more important to you than spending ironite you've earned throughout the week on other features and you've shown a clear mastery for competing. That's why things like secret locations and daily challenges (and now PVP) give you so much each week!
Any time man. I looked at the rankings after I took a 2 hour nap yesterday morning and took note of where you, gmac and a couple others were. I knew you two were going to be making a run so I just skipped your names when they showed up on my list. The funny thing is there was probably 6 times that your name was on my list together with both Chillster and Basrog so I just attacked them and moved onQuote:
Originally Posted by CanyptianFit
Sparton - as always - thanks for participating in this dialogue. Always appreciated and your points are solid. Just hearing you're working on Sacrifice is great to hear ;)
I understand that different dynamics will come into play with PvP and number of attacks. And of course if someone is not participating I don't want them to get "beat up" (though is there something preventing that?)
But I'm talking about situations like this
Attachment 2551
I have friends with MUCH better percentages on both offense and defense. They were not top 25. The sheer number of attacks worked against them. 37 attacks on this player! Versus over 400 on many! And this player has nothing to feel guilty about - he benefited from a bug. Pure and simple.
You have emphasized the importance of building a better defense - but in this case a single untalismaned RTTH Eddie that lost every battle would have fared better here than a well thought-out defense attacked 450 times with a very admirable 35% win percentage. That's not right.
Somewhere there is a bug. And our sample size from my thread is small. So we really don't know how many of these "outliers" are there. I'm going to stop complaining because - like I said in the other thread - the awareness is now there. It's my choice whether I participate or not - just like those complaining about the Prisoner - knowing the situation. And I still enjoy this game a lot. But I just don't believe "strategy" is leading to a discrepancy this big. Something internal is going on with the matchmaking.
If someone hasn't played the game in a while, we try to take them out of matchmaking, but in general the main thing that'll stop such people from being attacked is their points naturally floating to a place where there's lots more people and therefore the odds of being in someone's attack list around your ranking is low.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
Yeah, the sample size from your threads are small, but it's gotten a surprisingly high amount of people from the top 25... and there's only 25 of those each week, so it does shine a light on a decent percentage of those top players.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
But to be clear, I still agree that the matchmaking needs improvement, and I can only think of one or two "legitimate" ways someone could have a defense count that low and rank that high, which still shouldn't be that likely.
Hey Sparton, thanks for keeping the communication up. I don't want to quote myself here, but since it might have eben overlooked two pages ago:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nine
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko
Those figures are crazy and they don't seem right/fair to me either Nicko. How can you only do 193 attacks get hit only 37 times and get to 16? That is nuts - the attack and defence stats are not even that good.......the system must be a bit broken somewhere for this to happen surely - if you advertised this people would not bother playing in their droves I think?
Yeah thanks for the communication Sparton, much appreciated. The one post from Nickos thread that gets me thinking there may be a pattern that can potentially be exploited is this one... (no disrespect to Askora as I'm not calling him or her out, just using the numbers as an example)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Askora
It seems like a vet player with a solid lineup could potentially mill around in the lower ranks facing weaker attack teams, less attacks in general and then hit it hard close to reset and climb rather quickly into the top 100 because of a lower number of DEF matches mixed with a high DEF win %.
While it might never work to get one into the top 25, it still seems broken and unfair to those trying so hard to climb the ranks and getting bogged down in that 1700-2100 traffic jam where everyone is attacking everyone, if this scenario is a possibility.
As I mentioned before, I do enjoy PvP and appreciate a new challenge despite the bumps we all have to work through and even though there's no plans of an Eternal run in my immediate future, I'm just wondering... Is this a possible scenario? And if it isn't, how can these numbers be explained?
Edit: I ask because it seems the less I attack and revenge DEF holds insted, the less I am attacked. Of course I could be wrong and will need this week to be sure. Just seems a bit suspect to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nine
To me, it just seems like it's arbitrarily reducing the amount of your defenses that cost you points. At that point I'd rather just reduce the amount of points you lose in general, but I'm still not sure that's the best solution to begin with, and it wouldn't solve the underlying issue of potential outliers at the top of the leaderboard with many less attacks than others (if anything they'd be attacked even less, potentially compounding the problem).Quote:
Originally Posted by Nine
Possibly, but what good is milling around 1300 and being attacked very infrequently to try and climb to 2300+ in the last 24 hours compared to fighting to stay at 1900 then trying to climb to 2300+ in the last 24 hours? The former player is probably attacked way less throughout the week, but has to spend way more ironite and time to climb up in the last day (the day most relevant to getting end of week rewards), and they're probably getting way less Iron Coins in a given week (and yes a lot of top players don't care about Iron Coins right now, but maximizing income will become very relevant for most people soon).Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
Well, you as a player have more control over who attacks you based on revenging than who attacks you based on matchmaking, so I would say trying to only fight people you think won't fight back/will lose when retaliating seems like an entirely legitimate strategy, as it focuses on you having a capable attack and defense team and reading the intent/capabilities of your opponent. You risk climbing slower, but it's potentially a positive trade-off.Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
(I do a fair bit of this myself when my defense list is reasonably populated and I don't think I can do a full 10 sand sweep of my attack list.)
So then it is possible for this type of scenario to happen? Seems to me like it would be more ironite spent to stay in the 1900 VP range throughout the week than it would be going all-in at the end of it (it has been mentioned by others that this is more accurate). Again, how can Askoras final rank at 74 and others mentioned by Nicko be possible (playing less and climbing higher in the ranks)?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB
I notice it is quite difficult without consistently buying ironite to keep your head above water at 1700 VP but I have not put in the effort that others have to know for sure what would use up more ironite.
I was just reading where you stated that you guys were researching possible ways where people could abuse the system.. this seems like one potential way to bypass the players who are grinding PvP all week and again, somewhat unfair to them.
Thanks again for being so accessible as I think we all just want to keep it fun while keeping it fair and most of us forum lifers are willing to be patient and work with you guys on this thing.
Cheers
There's other things to it too. I've been trying to bottle up some changes to matchmaking to eliminate one possible way that a wonky metric is being used for matchmaking, in addition to making other changes to improve variety in attack lists and spread attacks out more evenly.Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
You don't get a prize for being 2300 for most of the week; you only get a prize for finishing there (and being within the top 25). You just have a natural advantage to being able to place highly the closer you are to a given division as the week comes to a close.Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
There's arguably more value from spending ironite later in the week, but also arguably more risk that you won't be able to catch up to the division you want the more other people try to do the same.
I would maintain that, all else being equal [which is not the case, but we're investigating that], trading more time/ironite to catch up and pass compared to those who maintain a rank throughout the week is an appropriate trade off. There will always be a pressure to finish in the top divisions relative to the amount of people who want to be there... based on how much they want to be there. In general, though, while there is movement at the top, most people at the highest divisions end at a rank not far off where they were in the middle of it (even Jofer cooled his jets for a bit then blitz towards the top mid-week to make it easier to end on top).Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
We naturally want to limit how much you can just throw ironite at your screen to bypass others to give more people a chance, which is generally kept in check with the general length of combat and the increased likelihood you'll be revenged. However, if someone wants the top that much more than you... then you'll be passed.
For sure. As always, I'm very appreciative of how mature and constructive many of you guys are as we continue to improve and add to the game over time.Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
would you mind telling us, when we can expect some of the changes you mentioned? cannot wait for sacrifice :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB
The next update may not have as many fixes as I'd like, but we're trying to get out some major fixes sooner rather than later, plus a bit of new stuff to get. The subsequent update having more substantial additions (potentially Sacrifice, and potentially more than that). Will give you more information as we get closer to release.Quote:
Originally Posted by slauki
I defintely don't spend ironite consistently (0-2 SoW refills per week I'd say) and I have had no troubles staying above 1700 VP. Perhaps I've just been lucky with getting less attacks than others?Quote:
Originally Posted by mjmxiii
Seems so...cause with no crazy def rate (like me for example) you cant really overcome the around 400 (and to others more) attacks. At best you stay without progress or usually just go down (without spending)Quote:
Originally Posted by konstifik
Nothing you can do when after 6 hours you log in and have 45 notifications...cant even see who attacked to revenge...and even if you refill to recover the 400pts lost, till you do that another 30 attacks appear. :p
So.... I might have been right about the attack all vs revenge only approach albeit, much differently than I expected...
Mid-way through the week I have more DEF holds than I do offensive attacks... currently seems that as I'm casually running thru PvP to get the 3/3 daily done and revenging DEF holds only, I get close or into that 1700-2100 kill zone and then sit back and watch the attacks start rolling in (if only it was cash money!)... My current stats for the week read as follows:
ATK# 91% (43/47)
DEF# 33% (60/183)
It's kinda wacky lol :p I dont know if thats the way Sparton and the team intended it but I'm going to assume that it's not... Me thinks its safe to say that the matchmaking RNG needs work lol... my DEF hold % is up 10% from last week and is leaning towards my initial suspicions being somewhat accurate even though arrival to that conclusion took a left in Albuquerque:
1) a better DEF win % is possible in the lower ranks for a vet player. (Duh)
It only remains to be seen if bypassing player attacks from the higher ranks on the last day is possible and allows me to place higher than I probably should.
Edit: forgot to note that my thought that less attacks and more revenges from me would result in less attacks from others was very, VERY wrong! Has everything to do with entering that 1700 VP range.
pretty much my story.Quote:
mjmxiii
So.... I might have been right about the attack all vs revenge only approach albeit, much differently than I expected...
Mid-way through the week I have more DEF holds than I do offensive attacks... currently seems that as I'm casually running thru PvP to get the 3/3 daily done and revenging DEF holds only, I get close or into that 1700-2100 kill zone and then sit back and watch the attacks start rolling in (if only it was cash money!)... My current stats for the week read as follows:
ATK# 91% (43/47)
DEF# 33% (60/183)
It's kinda wacky lol I dont know if thats the way Sparton and the team intended it but I'm going to assume that it's not... Me thinks its safe to say that the matchmaking RNG needs work lol... my DEF hold % is up 10% from last week and is leaning towards my initial suspicions being somewhat accurate even though arrival to that conclusion took a left in Albuquerque:
1) a better DEF win % is possible in the lower ranks for a vet player. (Duh)
It only remains to be seen if bypassing player attacks from the higher ranks on the last day is possible and allows me to place higher than I probably should.
I attacked 77 times, held 65 times out of 203 attacks so far. (32%).
Pretty frustrating, especially with the non-50/50 dice roll. I attacked 24 times Monday evening, went first twice.
This is actually something I should have noted... of my 4 losses, in 3 of them I went second and in the one I went first I simply screwed the pooch and made the wrong move. I did not keep track of how many times I went 2nd in my wins but the coin toss seems to fall in my favor (oddly enough) most of the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shifter
Yo
I might not be the first one to post this but I'm lazy to read through 400+ comments.
Whenever Prisoner is about to transfer a received Doom to one of the opponents, the game freezes. This is pretty frustrating when the prisoner is taunted and you can't do anything to at least avoid or find a workaround to this glitch.
Same with Carriage Rider's scythe,transfer negative effects. If ur doomed game freezes...well it does say doom can't be removed,lol. Happened yesterday along with 2 other end match freezes. After starting 2nd & losing to Nicko 5-6x in a row,finally won the last & APM?? error...almost smashed the phone,lmao!!! Got the victory tho...phew!Quote:
Originally Posted by Enti
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enti
I'll pass that along; thanks for the info.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silentknight
What about Prisoner transfering the Chain to another toon??Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB
I lost several games because of this.
The Prisoner can also transfer negative effects to vanished toons─who are normally immune.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frost
This is a known issue; we haven't been able to make a fix for this yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tritium
can you tell us of some planned fixes/tunings and a vague release date yet?
Well ... i got to admit, that on 2 out of 5 times, the enemy begins, it's pretty hard to win the fight.
Some doom-combos like mummy and ssd or troll and red bat are skipped by me, as i'm sure when the enemy goes first, i'm dead within the first round!
And even if i surwive or go second, it's mostly the luck of my 3 sets of invisibility talismans.
So mostly i play "only" the 10-13 fights per day to get my legendary soul and mostly only choose half attack, half revenge on defense and that's enough.
We're still working on the matchmaking bugbear, but we have a bunch of stability improvements (from improving loadtimes to reducing/eliminating small hangs in the game when it reconnects to the server).Quote:
Originally Posted by Kutte
Fairly soon!Quote:
Originally Posted by Kutte
thx for the info!
Hi Sparton,Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB
Excellent to hear you guys are working on stability/speed improvements, hope this will help people to farm faster too!
If you could be a little more specific on some expected release dates and changes lots of us would appreciate. Itīs been over 3 weeks since arena went live, sacrifice should be coming by now, correct? (we are dying over here!)
So, if possible, expected release dates for some expected features.
Sacrifice
Changes in the store (arena and tropper points)
BNW
Thanks,
Gmac
Yeah, Sparton give the guy some answers, I bet his questions are the voice of all of us here now. I caught myself playing Candy Crush more than this game now days. I see a lot of long time players "taking a brake" only because they got tired of waiting for something new to happen in the game. If I didn't have so much ironite to spend I would've taken the brake too :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Gmac
Sadly I can't share specific dates, but I can say Sacrifice is coming along quite well, and is indeed the next major feature we will be releasing (just not with the next update).Quote:
Originally Posted by Gmac
Thanks Bradata, and yes, Itīs very sad to see long time players go.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bradata
And Sparton,
If I may add something.
I bet sacrifice is the most wanted feature of all right now, especially for people on PVP, and itīs also suppose to come prior to BNW.
So, if you canīt share dates perhaps you can bring some light on how that is going to work. That would be great.
For instance:
What can we get when we sacrifice something?
Eddies are inclined to give us Eddies?
Character lv influences? If so how. A 5 lv is a 5 lv or needs to be a "born" 5
If we sacrifice toons with skill shards, do we get those skill shards back?
Give us something to work here so we can prepare for it!!!
And pleeeeeease, donīt say "stay tuned!" LOL
All the best,
Gmac
I guess you were still typing when Sparton gave an answer to your question. I think he will not be able to give more specific details because the Sacrifice thingy is being developed as of now and he doesn't want to ruin the surprise :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Gmac
At least we know that will not be coming with this next update :( so back to Candy Crush for me!
Well, if devs could give us some insight or general guidelines it would be great, theyīve got to keep us hungry, but not starve us to death! :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bradata
Hey Sparton, out of curiosity, are you guys working on fixing the "chest lag" that we still experience when the enemy dies right before the victory screen appears? This was introduced with the December update (I believe) and hasn't been fixed yet.
I don't want to go over all of the details yet (as we're still finalizing it, so the exact rules are subject to change), but pretty much anything you can think of that would indicate a character is "better" or "rarer" is a factor for getting better sacrifice rewards. The rarity of the character (but also the rarity that character is naturally earned at), the level of the character, the class, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gmac
That should be fixed (or at least vastly improved) in the impending update, along with other places where the visuals of the game would freeze up for a second or two depending on your device/amount of things in your inventory.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tritium
Awesome! I can't wait for sacrifice and the quality of life game tweaks. Thanks for keeping us in the know!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB
Thanks for the update Sparton.
How about the "rewards". Can you expand on the potential rewards? Is it just souls I'm assuming, but they can be different colored souls? Can they be specific toons?
How about skill shards? Can we potentially choose to sacrifice a character with shards added and get the shards removed so we can place on another toon? Don't want to lose the character, just remove shards to apply elsewhere. Is that potentially in the cards?
As you've read on the boards, lot of pent up interest in this feature and the more high level insights we have the more we can prepare and keep interest up.
Thanks in advance.
Even if we lose the character that would also work for me, and more nerve wracking to make that decision (or not!).Quote:
Originally Posted by CanyptianFit
Sparton, look at the interest generated in this subject, elaborate some more please! (maybe a thread to discuss/debate potential issues? Iīll leave that to you and Nicko)
And thanks for sharing!
I was wandering and many other players as well if there is going to be an option where you can sacrifice a stock of not that rare toons for the price of one better character. I am sure many of us have hundreds of souls in their books now that are worth nothing and would be very happy if they can unload them all for one better soul.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparton_LOTB