PvP Week 11 - Statistics and Discussion

[Nicko]

Week 11 ends with a Mayan theme to kick off Book of Souls tour part II and a new 5* Eddie...

Congrats to Enti! A well deserved first place victory.

Two weeks in a row that we've had a different winner - though it looks like Jofer is not quite ready to give up his top 3 position yet...

And this week is already off to a bang with the return of ShaolinLondo, who has already taken a very early lead. If he has the "attack bug" he could be quite hard to catch. If matchmaking has normalized it could be a pretty exciting week at the top.

Which brings me to a topic I've been hammering into the ground - the point system...

This is a topic that was discussed at the end of the week 10 thread, but because it was buried at the end I thought I'd cut and paste snips of a a comment I had made to start this weeks thread

The greatest predictor of success in this game is how hard you're willing to work. Jofer has a determination like no other. No matter how things were set up, he'd be number one - I loved his analogy about giving his account to another player - wouldn't make a difference. They wouldn't duplicate what he's done.

But the SECOND biggest predictor is defensive losses. When you're at the top it's 20 points a loss. And even 12 points is a big deal if you're getting attacked 450 times and your competitor is attacked 300 times while making the same number of offensive attacks.

Kind of like going to work, and while you're making the same as the guy next to you, he's paying 25% in taxes but you're paying 45%. Suck it up? Guess you could do that - but I doubt you'd be happy about it.

So my point was we know matchmaking has been a work in progress and up to this point broken.

So my suggestion was to make point losses for breaks in defense minimal - ex 0-5 points - and continue to reward holds. Players will STILL have to buy Ironite to compete - but from a psychological perspective you will go forward much more proportionate to your effort, defense will STILL matter, and if the match lists are still broken it wouldn't matter nearly as much.

Until we have great confidence that matchmaking is "fair" - and to be honest, it has seemed glitchy from the beginning of beta - I'm going to continue to ask the developers to rethink this system and encourage defensive holds to be a carrot, without making defensive losses a stick. Even once it's fixed - a system that rewards instead of penalizes would be better from a psychological perspective.

Another topic of the day I hear being discussed a lot is Visions Eddie. It seems that if he's in your roster, he's on your team. He's populating PvP like rabbits on fertility drugs.

He DID need an update - no question there - but is he now a 10* Eddie instead of a 5* Eddie? I'm using him myself and wouldn't even consider another Eddie in this talisman-heavy environment. He's kept my Holds at a very respectable level - and when I lose it's usually due to a crash or a VE team. But is he too much? Or would Holds be too low if he wasn't there? The developers have said they'd like more diversity in PvP. I think it's pretty safe to say Visions Eddie is the "new Mummy" and working against that goal.

On to stats - very similar to what I saw before the last matchmaking update (which caused those of us near the top to become Invisible)

Attacks: 561

Times Attacked: 373

Ratio: 0.66

My ratio almost doubled because attacks on me soared in the last few days. We've been assured that this is normal - those who weren't getting attacked are now being attacked more, and those who were getting heavily attacked are being attacked less to even things out. I don't think it will ever be "1.0" for the really active players because we attack so much.

This weeks stats will be a matchmaking system in flux - next weeks should be more revealing.

Thanks for posting - it's really the only way we the players have of seeing how the fixes that are being applied are working!

[Jofer16]

Grats Enti!

Great post Nicko, the rabbits on fertility drugs was hilarious hahaha. And yeah there's really no way around Visions if RNG runs wild against you. I think at one point yesterday I lost to your team 3 times in a row when he went first and cleared 75% of my buffs. It's hit or miss but no consistent way around it in those cases. Also the point system, in all honestly I feel like this game is STILL in beta. The devs don't really seem to know what they're doing and just change something, release it to us and then tweak from there. We are there testers and QA department, this isn't a full game.

Good luck to Shaolin this week, he's probably the next deserving for how much I messed with him in the past lol

[hold]

Another topic of the day I hear being discussed a lot is Visions Eddie. It seems that if he's in your roster, he's on your team. He's populating PvP like rabbits on fertility drugs.

He DID need an update - no question there - but is he now a 10* Eddie instead of a 5* Eddie? I'm using him myself and wouldn't even consider another Eddie in this talisman-heavy environment. He's kept my Holds at a very respectable level - and when I lose it's usually due to a crash or a VE team. But is he too much? Or would Holds be too low if he wasn't there? The developers have said they'd like more diversity in PvP. I think it's pretty safe to say Visions Eddie is the "new Mummy" and working against that goal.

Honestly I try to avoid teams with VE in defense if possible. The reason is that last week twice in a row I went 2nd and VE stripped all 4 of my toons buff clean and from that moment I watched autoplay until I was finished. "Stun, freeze, taunt" ... really the full blow. Not really funny at all.

Other things don't work when immunity is on (Loot, Magus CR stealing buffs ...) but it doesn't affect VE. I can cope with most other teams using my brain ... with VE I'm relying on luck and that sucks. I loose to other teams as well and quite often it is my fault making a mistake or simply underestimating the other team. I can live with that but VE is no fun at all. Even if he would strip only 2 toons clear of buffs and you loose them for round 2 you are more or less done already. If not it won't take long until he stuns your team for a full round and that's the end of your team.

Maybe I was incredibly unlucky against VE teams but I try not to challenge them. My 2 cent.

[Nicko]

Love reading the comments, but I'm going to be a pest and ask you guys to post your stats (just total #s, not your win/lose percentages) in addition to the comments

Thanks!

[hold]

I'm going to be a pest and ask you guys to post your stats (just total #s, not your win/lose percentages) in addition to comments

Thanks!

Oh sorry ... sure no secret on my side:

Attack 296 (92%)
Defense 269 (17%)

until the update I seemed to be more or less invisible.

[Jofer16]

I'm going to be a pest and ask you guys to post your stats (just total #s, not your win/lose percentages) in addition to comments

Thanks!

My stats were almost identical to yours again, total attacks and defenses were only 10-15 apart from your numbers. We must be in the same list group Was tied to my attacks. After the change I could go like 8 hours with zero attacks if I just didn't play. As soon as I'd start attacking the floodgates would open. Needs better balance, it's either one extreme or the other.

[Nicko]

Oh sorry ... sure no secret on my side:

Attack 296 (92%)
Defense 269 (17%)

until the update I seemed to be more or less invisible.

Thanks Hold!

And to reiterate - feel free to post win/loss percentages if you want - but total numbers without percentages like I posted are also great to see how matchmaking is going

[Nicko]

My stats were almost identical to yours again, total attacks and defenses were only 10-15 apart from your numbers. We must be in the same list group Was tied to my attacks. After the change I could go like 8 hours with zero attacks if I just didn't play. As soon as I'd start attacking the floodgates would open. Needs better balance, it's either one extreme or the other.

Exactly. Will be interesting to see if this update achieves those goals...

[BadTaste]

Week 11:
Attacks: 417
Times attacked: 307
Ratio: 0,74

After some losses to VE teams (needed 3 attempts against Slaukis team b4 I won) I did some minor changes in my attack strategy and the result was for me amazing. 184 wins in a row and I stopped there because PVP had reset... I cleared my attack lists over and over. At least 97% of the players in my lists were ranked so much lower than me that almost every fight only gave 12 points. And during this period I was attacked/revenged so much that even if won fight after fight I bare moved upwards the point ladder because I lost 20 points every time the AI could not hold my defence. I think I saw a player ranked top 10 on every third or fourth attack list. I thought they would appear more often after the new update...
IMHO the point system may be ok for some players who can benefit from beating high ranked players, but I don't think this sytem is fair for high ranked players.
Anyway, I ended #6 after a very fun race against Gmac.

Just have to post this:

[Killhouse]

This week started looking pretty positive and ended just being a brutal mess. I had a free afternoon or two this week early on and knowing the current matchmaking in place, spent lots of that time climbing to #2 with about 4,500 points. That was the day of the update... at that time I think I was roughly around 300 attacks with maybe 150 defenses.

Then comes the update and suddenly the top players are all over the lists (this is a good thing but shouldn't have been done mid week). I had to climb to #2 at 12 points a match, never was there more rewarded since players over 2,000 points didn't show before the update. After the update, lost 20 points an attack against me and could only gain 12. On top of that, matchmaking seems have been trying to bring ratios towards the magic 1.0 ratio... man what a slog.

Final week stats were:

818 attacks
438 defenses

Even with a 98% win rate, i had to actually double the number of attacks coming in just to remain where I was. So I faced nearly 300 attacks at -20 points after the update (thankfully some held) and with every win only awarding 12 points unless I got lucky and Enti showed on my list (later Jofer passed me and was a welcome 20 pts too).

Two main thoughts before this gets too long -

1) Don't make sweeping matchmaking changes mid week, I agree that things needed to be fixed but players make choices to invest resources into the week based on the current state, be it good or bad. Doing changes to the formula can create a very negative experience. Again things needed to be fixed, but can't they preload the patch to take effect as close to the reset as possible? Pre warn players an update will be coming?

2) This week started as fun for PvP, I finally made a decent return to the competition since beta, however bugs were also dominating the scene and others have posted their frustration. Personally I'd rather have longer periods between updates if it means the devs have time to properly test the updates. The game always feels like it's in beta.

They fixed the matchmaking for top players to appear, but I constantly faced the same 6-8 people after each clear, sorry Blackbolt, Silentknight, Zdm, Deathdealer, Enkilol, Buddy, Bruce7... those are the ones that come to mind. They were always on my lists and just it makes me feel like crap to have to keep hitting the same people who were much lower on the lists. The player pool can't be that small.

Another addition to the matchmaking fix was people are back to being invisible again, maybe that'll be fixed with a fresh week but early results are saying otherwise.


I know this will come as a rant and it is. I've played since July and am at my lowest point with this game. Jofer and Nicko are much better at vocalizing these concerns than I am, but I wanted to vent a little myself.

Still hoping that they can focus on cleaning up the list of bugs that grows with each update and addition to the game (bugs with shaman Eddie, bugs with prisoner passive, bugs with the new talismans already).

Stop adding and fix what's already broken.