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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 12, 2017 20:11:49 GMT -5
I would love for this to be in general discussion as it is meant to be more thoughtful and conversation starting rather than complaint driven. I have elected to put it here in rants as that will spare the mods from sending it here. I have NOT attached it to any of the existing threads as it crosses over some of them, and stands somewhat apart. I apologize in advance for the wall of text and the rough nature of some of the writing. Its more of a brain dump than the analysis I would like. Sadly I am limited by data on hand, and I don't need to spend more time on this when it is cutting into actual gaming  There has been a lot of talk about how the system is “broken”, how people feel they are being treated unfairly by it (win rate, who they are matched with, how they are matched). Before we can have a conversation about any of it, we need to break down what it is. There were early comparisons of MM to ELO en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system and this description is a fair one. However, we have all the problems of ELO, and an incomplete/partial implementation. We also have a few unique to War Robots: an un-even playing field and lots of incentive external to your league score/rank. Lets talk about those external incentives, because they are the heart of the matter here. In chess your ELO is its own incentive. You have no reason (external) to manipulate that score. In War Robots there is an external reward attached to you ACHIEVING a score, not maintaining it (chess). Once you have received the reward for a tier if you can not advance it doesn’t make sense for you to remain. In fact it makes sense for you to move down, because there are easier rewards to be had in the lower, uneven playing field. The motivate for these rewards is great. Au can get you the bots and be used to speed up the upgrades you need to compete in even higher tiers. Lets look at the cost of a top hanger: Fury: 5000 Au Lancelot: 5000 Au Ancile: 1500 Au 2 Orakan: 2400 Au 3 Zeus: 3500 Au (this is a stand in for tridents) 17400 before rushing any upgrades, and assumes you have a 5th slot (5000 au). This represents about a $135 cash investment for just equipment. In absolute dollars this is a LARGE sum of money. However your value for clubbing is obscenely low: assuming that you can earn 120 gold an hour clubbing (10 five minute matches not accounting for time spent maintaining your league score DOWN), you would need to club for 145 hours. This works out to less than a buck an hour, you would be better off working for minimum wage (US) and buying the hanger. This means that there are a few simple changes that pix can make to combat clubbing and help the lament that “no one grabs beacons" League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments. Remove the gold for top damage dealers and give 1Au to each winning team member, and 5Au to the top cap grabber (we would have to have “beacon stealers” threads moved to rants) Change squadding rewards to 1 au per game per squad member per win and move the cap to 50 au a day. More complex changes could be undertaken. To look at those we have to have a brief dive into ELO itself. ELO has some limits to how players can gain or loose points called K-factor. Players of different levels will gain and loose points differently based on this factor. A master chess player, vs a ranked amateur will still gain points, but at a slower rate than if the new players. Once someone has become a master/expert this factor limits how quickly they can gain points regardless of how low their rank sinks. Pix sadly did not implement this, they chose the approach of fixing the gain/loss value and altering the amount of points needed to achieve a league score. Lets look at the distribution of "wins" you need to advance (assuming zero losses along the way, rounding up) if you start in the recruit league From Zero to Private: 62 matches (806) Private to Bronze: 8 matches (910) Bronze to Silver: 15 matches (1105) Silver to Gold: 46 matches (1703) Gold to Diamond: 46 matches (2301) Diamond to Expert: 70 Matchs (3211) Expert to Master: 69 Matches (4108) Master to Champion: 69 Matches (5005) This makes tanking not only dead simple (-20 for a loss no matter what your previous rank was) but when combine with the external incentive (Au) it creates an environment ripe for the abuse were all seeing. There is one other factor that folks like to complain about, and thats imbalanced matches. Those matches where you see players from higher or lower leagues/ranks mixed together. Part of this might be a lack of available players. And I had this suspicion for a while myself. However there is a very good reason to do this. ELO and what pix has created are both closed systems. Any match awards and takes away 49 league points. This means folks who are at the top, or moving up need to gain those points from some where, and because there is no ceiling points are slowly concentrating at the top! This points to one of two things, either lots of folks are loosing matches at zero adding points to the system, or folks are tanking or being forced down in the leagues by upward pressure. This pressure creates a demand for points at the top, and these out of band matches (and your 50% win rates) are a way of moving points up assuming that every one plays nice. It also doest account for players with points who ARENT active, a problem in both chess and our current system. With more activity in the system and especially at the top your creating more instability requiring more imbalanced matches or forcing players down. The fixed nature of the scoring (+13 vs -20) exacerbates this problem, one that k-factor somewhat solves. Without an injection of points into the system (probably greater than the current gain rates from negative scores) were going to continue to see instability. This is a guess, but probably a good one based on current MM behavior, and hard to verify without data that only Pix has. The inactive players present a larger threat to the system as a whole, and represent a new emergent behavior with clubbers Squadding. If your in a 12/12 bot in private clubbing the whole goal is NOT to advance. The simple way of doing this is through squadding. The second account is dead wood, they never join the game. This means that your splitting wins, and losses can move you up more slowly and down more quickly (tank one account play the other). However if you abandon that second account with points attached your going be removing those from the system (exacerbating the issues were currently seeing). Pix needs to implement a “bouns points” system much like ELO, attaching those to your daily tasks and possibly beacons (I caution against this, as it is just moving a problem around not solving it) to help level out some of the imbalance in the system. |
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 13, 2017 5:19:22 GMT -5
As long as you have performance based opponents, there's a strong incentive to perform badly for a while in order to have easy opponents. This is being used extensively by tankers/hardcore seal clubbers, and to lesser degree by "normal" players who just quit a few matches early or intentionally move down a few leagues. The fact that the best losers gain points will also result in "honest" players raising despite losing in many games. (This would also happen if all losing players would receive negative points, but not as quickly.)
You can't tweak the system in a way that it works, sorry. We'll see tanking as long as player performance is the only/dominant factor in determining opponents. All those tweaks can make it more difficult to "tank"/lose points intentionally, but it will still happen.
We have to go back to a hangar-based matchmaking, maybe tweaked a bit depending on player performance. (And this wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as the hangar score is fair. The old system obviously wasn't fair.)
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Post by suntron on Mar 13, 2017 6:18:40 GMT -5
As long as you have performance based opponents, there's a strong incentive to perform badly for a while in order to have easy opponents. This is being used extensively by tankers/hardcore seal clubbers, and to lesser degree by "normal" players who just quit a few matches early or intentionally move down a few leagues. The fact that the best losers gain points will also result in "honest" players raising despite losing in many games. (This would also happen if all losing players would receive negative points, but not as quickly.) You can't tweak the system in a way that it works, sorry. We'll see tanking as long as player performance is the only/dominant factor in determining opponents. All those tweaks can make it more difficult to "tank"/lose points intentionally, but it will still happen. We have to go back to a hangar-based matchmaking, maybe tweaked a bit depending on player performance. (And this wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as the hangar score is fair. The old system obviously wasn't fair.) Lots of other PvP games have performance Leagues that work but they all have meaningful improvements in rewards per game as you rise up Leagues and level (hanger) protection to stop high levels clubbing. So the current performance system can work but needs a lot of changes. Remember the old system was really flawed too. |
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Post by sonofsam on Mar 13, 2017 8:08:59 GMT -5
If matches weren't a zero sum even if it was just +1 then the majority of players would be upward mobile. They would separate into small groups of various skill and not level that would follow each other up the league rankings. One group would move out of silver 2 up to 3 then I while they are climbing silver 3 the next group would climb sliver 2. Soon they would be doing the same with gold 1 and silver 3 until everyone was in the top tiers. One point may not seem like much but considering the number of matches played every day it is.
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 13, 2017 8:47:37 GMT -5
As long as you have performance based opponents, there's a strong incentive to perform badly for a while in order to have easy opponents. Lots of other PvP games have performance Leagues that work but they all have meaningful improvements in rewards per game as you rise up Leagues and level (hanger) protection to stop high levels clubbing. So the current performance system can work but needs a lot of changes. Remember the old system was really flawed too. Yes, some games have battle payouts depending on leagues, other games have league-only currency that you get when rising through the ranks. The crucial issue is that league payouts should be much better than you can get from easy battles. It is also usual to take several days to rise or drop a league. Here we have no substantial league rewards, and you can drop 2 leagues by getting just 20 losses with -20 output. The problem is that we now have accessible gold even for new players, so you can't easily change the reward system (higher payouts in higher leagues) without disadvantaging the players coming new into the game. One suggestion would be to introduce a new currency, like snowflakes or coins. You get a daily payout of this currency depending on your league level and get extra for rising to a league for the first time. In your battles, you can earn more of this currency depending on the strength (league) of your opponents. The new currency could be used to buy new robots (Dash and the wild bunch) and new weapons (Prolots maybe, and whatever comes next). And you could use it like coins, getting random rewards of gold/silver/WSP stuff like event coins. How's this? As a separate measure, tanking needs to be further penalized (say award no league cups if damage is below 20% of the best player, making it more difficult to drop a battle). |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 13, 2017 9:53:18 GMT -5
If matches weren't a zero sum even if it was just +1 then the majority of players would be upward mobile. They would separate into small groups of various skill and not level that would follow each other up the league rankings. One group would move out of silver 2 up to 3 then I while they are climbing silver 3 the next group would climb sliver 2. Soon they would be doing the same with gold 1 and silver 3 until everyone was in the top tiers. One point may not seem like much but considering the number of matches played every day it is. Yes, injecting points into the system would be good, it would avoid a lot of the thrashing that we see now. If the winning beacon capper gets gold the loosing beacon capper should get +1-5 league points (I don't know what the number should be but I'm sure pix could figure it out). This would mean that if the last place loosing player is -20 today they would be -19 or -15 .... the points are added in as an offset and can gather at the top, rather than having to make their way up from the bottom. |
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Post by Demosthenes on Mar 13, 2017 10:02:26 GMT -5
Awarding league points for beacon captures would ameliorate some of the worst distortions of the current system.
Top beacon capper on both teams should be awarded league points, points to be shared in the case of ties. To maintain the zero-sum this could be "financed" by an equivalent penalty for each lowest beacon capper.
Even a modest award/penalty of 2 points would create a distribution of league points that would re-inforce that this is a beacon capture game rather than - as it does at the moment - penalise cappers.
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 13, 2017 10:16:51 GMT -5
Lots of other PvP games have performance Leagues that work but they all have meaningful improvements in rewards per game as you rise up Leagues and level (hanger) protection to stop high levels clubbing. So the current performance system can work but needs a lot of changes. Remember the old system was really flawed too. Yes, some games have battle payouts depending on leagues, other games have league-only currency that you get when rising through the ranks. The crucial issue is that league payouts should be much better than you can get from easy battles. It is also usual to take several days to rise or drop a league. Here we have no substantial league rewards, and you can drop 2 leagues by getting just 20 losses with -20 output. The problem is that we now have accessible gold even for new players, so you can't easily change the reward system (higher payouts in higher leagues) without disadvantaging the players coming new into the game. One suggestion would be to introduce a new currency, like snowflakes or coins. You get a daily payout of this currency depending on your league level and get extra for rising to a league for the first time. In your battles, you can earn more of this currency depending on the strength (league) of your opponents. The new currency could be used to buy new robots (Dash and the wild bunch) and new weapons (Prolots maybe, and whatever comes next). And you could use it like coins, getting random rewards of gold/silver/WSP stuff like event coins. How's this? As a separate measure, tanking needs to be further penalized (say award no league cups if damage is below 20% of the best player, making it more difficult to drop a battle). > The problem is that we now have accessible gold even for new players Right so there is easy gold at the bottom of the league system, move down and club. This is compounded by the fact that league rewards are lump sum rather than 1/30th a day. League points are the reward for top damage, so change gold distribution: 1au for each winner 5au for winning beacon grabber. You have removed all of the incentive for "very easy" prey, you might want to go down a level or two for easy pickings but even then thats questionable! |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2017 10:41:15 GMT -5
Increasing the Au rewards for higher leagues was almost a necessity to make Pix's league structure work. I don't know how they missed that.
The simplest of gear tests would help as well. Right now, there's really zero resolution at the low end of the league structure and far too many leagues dedicated to sorting out high end hangars. Just make it so that if you run weapons / bots higher than the max level of the league (e.g. rookie might have a max of 3), you can't get Au rewards.
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Post by boomsplat on Mar 13, 2017 11:23:10 GMT -5
Interesting read! The increase in rewards for higher tier play is somewhat there, but I think the silver needs to be addressed. I agree that it just seems like Pixo knew the risk of the tanking but made the choice that players wouldn't or it would not become so widespread....it seems like an odd choice when one of the reasons to move to the new MM was to eliminate clubbing which is essentially players figuring out how to manipulate the game to maximize rewards....same as tanking.
Building a TT hanger from my current 9/10 level, Silver is way more important to me than gold because of upgrades...and while I know I can pay for the premium to help increase the silver productivity per match, having a built in kicker for higher tier silver payout or a more favorable gold to silver exchange rate at higher tiers might prove to be another reason to not tank for players.
The instability of the upper tiers is an interesting thought that I didn't think of - you're right that in a closed point system especially at the top that TT players have to come down. It makes more sense on why I see Champion players in Expert.
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 13, 2017 11:50:37 GMT -5
Interesting read! The increase in rewards for higher tier play is somewhat there, but I think the silver needs to be addressed. I agree that it just seems like Pixo knew the risk of the tanking but made the choice that players wouldn't or it would not become so widespread....it seems like an odd choice when one of the reasons to move to the new MM was to eliminate clubbing which is essentially players figuring out how to manipulate the game to maximize rewards....same as tanking. Building a TT hanger from my current 9/10 level, Silver is way more important to me than gold because of upgrades...and while I know I can pay for the premium to help increase the silver productivity per match, having a built in kicker for higher tier silver payout or a more favorable gold to silver exchange rate at higher tiers might prove to be another reason to not tank for players. The instability of the upper tiers is an interesting thought that I didn't think of - you're right that in a closed point system especially at the top that TT players have to come down. It makes more sense on why I see Champion players in Expert. I didn't think of silver! With reduced gold for wins pix could change the rewards for premium. 2 gold for a win, 2x silver across the board. If premium price adjustments were made 2.99 for 10 days, 4.99 for 30, and 9.99 for two months 60 and 29.99 for a year you might see more players buying into the system as it provides actual value then! |
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Post by Dejnov on Mar 13, 2017 17:32:10 GMT -5
The motivate for these rewards is great. Au can get you the bots and be used to speed up the upgrades you need to compete in even higher tiers. Lets look at the cost of a top hanger: Fury: 5000 Au Lancelot: 5000 Au Ancile: 1500 Au 2 Orakan: 2400 Au 3 Zeus: 3500 Au (this is a stand in for tridents) 17400 before rushing any upgrades, and assumes you have a 5th slot (5000 au). This represents about a $135 cash investment for just equipment. In absolute dollars this is a LARGE sum of money. However your value for clubbing is obscenely low: assuming that you can earn 120 gold an hour clubbing (10 five minute matches not accounting for time spent maintaining your league score DOWN), you would need to club for 145 hours. This works out to less than a buck an hour, you would be better off working for minimum wage (US) and buying the hanger. League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments. ELO and what pix has created are both closed systems. Any match awards and takes away 49 league points. This means folks who are at the top, or moving up need to gain those points from some where, and because there is no ceiling points are slowly concentrating at the top! This points to one of two things, either lots of folks are loosing matches at zero adding points to the system, or folks are tanking or being forced down in the leagues by upward pressure. This pressure creates a demand for points at the top, and these out of band matches (and your 50% win rates) are a way of moving points up assuming that every one plays nice. It also doest account for players with points who ARENT active, a problem in both chess and our current system. With more activity in the system and especially at the top your creating more instability requiring more imbalanced matches or forcing players down. The fixed nature of the scoring (+13 vs -20) exacerbates this problem, one that k-factor somewhat solves. Without an injection of points into the system (probably greater than the current gain rates from negative scores) were going to continue to see instability. This is a guess, but probably a good one based on current MM behavior, and hard to verify without data that only Pix has. I just wanted to make a couple of comments related to your post and so I've just quoted the parts I'll be speaking to: 1) I don't believe that you need anywhere near the 23.4k Au you listed (including 4th and 5th slot payments). There are a bunch of enterprising data crunchers that are looking at performance data of the champions league and trying to gauge the most representative top tier hangar to replicate. This can be limited to just the top 20 (like I've done) or the top 50 with the highest winning percentage as petevb has done. What one starts to notice is that a top tier hangar usually (currently) consists of an Ancilot, PDB Griffin, DB Griffin, Plasmahad, and either a Stuka Griffin, TT Fury or a Thunder/Orkan Lancelot. If you go with the Stuka, you're looking at: 6000 Au in slots 6500 Au for the Ancilot 2500 Au for the Plasmahad 2400 Au for the DB Griffin 0 Au for the PDB Griffin 3900 Au for the Stuka OR 5000 Au for the TT Fury. Total expenditure is 21,3 Au or 22.4 Au for an average TT hangar (with correct layout). What is also apparent is that there is a requisite 6000 Au for sure for the slots, but there are also TT Bot/Weapon configs that are extremely cheap. If you skip the Fury and Lancelots (and double up on the Griffins) and the Plasmahad you can get a close to TT hangar for 6000+0+0+2400+2400+2500 = 13.3 Au (4 Griffins and a Plasmahad). Most of the alternate weapons on the two extra Grffs can be used on a Lancelot when you can afford one. 13k Au is a lot less than 23k Au and can be done within a year, maybe 6 within months. Especially if you don't speed anything up and save the 50 Au from leveling so that you purchase the slots first. (With the current league/daily tasks structure you should be able to clear 1200 Au a year on league awards (100*12) and 18000 in daily tasks (60/day * 300 days). This is easily all you need for a top tier hangar and is close to including either a Lancelot or Fury to help elevate it to TT. 2) They do add points into the system... with new players. The first dozen games are against bots with the player usually winning hands down (shoot things is all you need to do). New players basically get 1000 to 1500 points for free (Zero to Private for sure and possibly Private to Bronze). If they continue past that, then yes, it is now a zero sum game and you have to take your points from someone else. If they quit after losing a bunch of games in a row, like some new players will do, their points go into the league pool by being given to the winners. As long as there is churn and newbies there are points being added to the pool. 3) There is something else I've also noticed, but I'm not sure that the rankings you see actually represent the full pool of players in your league. I'm a member of the Outlaws clan and have two other clan members in Diamond II with me (on iOS). I can go to our clan page and I know, for a fact, that they are in Diamond II and also what their current points total is. I then go the Diamond II rating and I can't find either clan mate on the list (not above me, not below me, not where their points say the should be). I've done this search twice now (two different days) and I haven't seen either clan member yet. (I had to wait for clan members to move up to my ranking before I could try and find them). I know their on iOS, like me, because I've fought/squadded games with them recently. They still aren't showing up on my league tables. I'll keep checking for at least a week, but this point to the fact that their may be more than just '100' players in Diamond II... and that there is an alternate list/mirrors where they are dividing people up by points... not by number. For all I can tell there might be at least 300 players in the Diamond II league (with myself and each clan member on a different list)... or there could be many more... can't tell yet. Dejnov. |
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Post by ⓣⓡⓘⓒⓚⓨ48 on Mar 13, 2017 17:56:38 GMT -5
The motivate for these rewards is great. Au can get you the bots and be used to speed up the upgrades you need to compete in even higher tiers. Lets look at the cost of a top hanger: Fury: 5000 Au Lancelot: 5000 Au Ancile: 1500 Au 2 Orakan: 2400 Au 3 Zeus: 3500 Au (this is a stand in for tridents) 17400 before rushing any upgrades, and assumes you have a 5th slot (5000 au). This represents about a $135 cash investment for just equipment. In absolute dollars this is a LARGE sum of money. However your value for clubbing is obscenely low: assuming that you can earn 120 gold an hour clubbing (10 five minute matches not accounting for time spent maintaining your league score DOWN), you would need to club for 145 hours. This works out to less than a buck an hour, you would be better off working for minimum wage (US) and buying the hanger. League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments. ELO and what pix has created are both closed systems. Any match awards and takes away 49 league points. This means folks who are at the top, or moving up need to gain those points from some where, and because there is no ceiling points are slowly concentrating at the top! This points to one of two things, either lots of folks are loosing matches at zero adding points to the system, or folks are tanking or being forced down in the leagues by upward pressure. This pressure creates a demand for points at the top, and these out of band matches (and your 50% win rates) are a way of moving points up assuming that every one plays nice. It also doest account for players with points who ARENT active, a problem in both chess and our current system. With more activity in the system and especially at the top your creating more instability requiring more imbalanced matches or forcing players down. The fixed nature of the scoring (+13 vs -20) exacerbates this problem, one that k-factor somewhat solves. Without an injection of points into the system (probably greater than the current gain rates from negative scores) were going to continue to see instability. This is a guess, but probably a good one based on current MM behavior, and hard to verify without data that only Pix has. I just wanted to make a couple of comments related to your post and so I've just quoted the parts I'll be speaking to: 1) I don't believe that you need anywhere near the 23.4k Au you listed (including 4th and 5th slot payments). There are a bunch of enterprising data crunchers that are looking at performance data of the champions league and trying to gauge the most representative top tier hangar to replicate. This can be limited to just the top 20 (like I've done) or the top 50 with the highest winning percentage as petevb has done. What one starts to notice is that a top tier hangar usually (currently) consists of an Ancilot, PDB Griffin, DB Griffin, Plasmahad, and either a Stuka Griffin, TT Fury or a Thunder/Orkan Lancelot. If you go with the Stuka, you're looking at: 6000 Au in slots 6500 Au for the Ancilot 2500 Au for the Plasmahad 2400 Au for the DB Griffin 0 Au for the PDB Griffin 3900 Au for the Stuka OR 5000 Au for the TT Fury. Total expenditure is 21,3 Au or 22.4 Au for an average TT hangar (with correct layout). What is also apparent is that there is a requisite 6000 Au for sure for the slots, but there are also TT Bot/Weapon configs that are extremely cheap. If you skip the Fury and Lancelots (and double up on the Griffins) and the Plasmahad you can get a close to TT hangar for 6000+0+0+2400+2400+2500 = 13.3 Au (4 Griffins and a Plasmahad). Most of the alternate weapons on the two extra Grffs can be used on a Lancelot when you can afford one. 13k Au is a lot less than 23k Au and can be done within a year, maybe 6 within months. Especially if you don't speed anything up and save the 50 Au from leveling so that you purchase the slots first. (With the current league/daily tasks structure you should be able to clear 1200 Au a year on league awards (100*12) and 18000 in daily tasks (60/day * 300 days). This is easily all you need for a top tier hangar and is close to including either a Lancelot or Fury to help elevate it to TT. 2) They do add points into the system... with new players. The first dozen games are against bots with the player usually winning hands down (shoot things is all you need to do). New players basically get 1000 to 1500 points for free (Zero to Private for sure and possibly Private to Bronze). If they continue past that, then yes, it is now a zero sum game and you have to take your points from someone else. If they quit after losing a bunch of games in a row, like some new players will do, their points go into the league pool by being given to the winners. As long as there is churn and newbies there are points being added to the pool. 3) There is something else I've also noticed, but I'm not sure that the rankings you see actually represent the full pool of players in your league. I'm a member of the Outlaws clan and have two other clan members in Diamond II with me (on iOS). I can go to our clan page and I know, for a fact, that they are in Diamond II and also what their current points total is. I then go the Diamond II rating and I can't find either clan mate on the list (not above me, not below me, not where their points say the should be). I've done this search twice now (two different days) and I haven't seen either clan member yet. (I had to wait for clan members to move up to my ranking before I could try and find them). I know their on iOS, like me, because I've fought/squadded games with them recently. They still aren't showing up on my league tables. I'll keep checking for at least a week, but this point to the fact that their may be more than just '100' players in Diamond II... and that there is an alternate list/mirrors where they are dividing people up by points... not by number. For all I can tell there might be at least 300 players in the Diamond II league (with myself and each clan member on a different list)... or there could be many more... can't tell yet. Dejnov. Well thought out and your explanation on the noobie points explain why I see level 20 - 25 players at the top of Silver 1 with 1400 and 1500 points. As far as the player not showing in the list, CoC does that, it only shows 100 at any given time... even though there are prolly hundreds of thousands in any particular league. Why? IDK... server load? Regional grouping? Beats me. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 13, 2017 19:09:35 GMT -5
1) I don't believe that you need anywhere near the 23.4k Au you listed (including 4th and 5th slot payments). 2) They do add points into the system... with new players. 3) There is something else I've also noticed, but I'm not sure that the rankings you see actually represent the full pool of players in your league. Dejnov. I think it was fuzzy above and I should make it more clear. The $135 calculation is based on the 17400 gold for items. It assumes that you have the slots and that you don't rush anything. Lets assume that your calculation is correct, that it is 1 year and 13k Au to get a top tier hanger. Are you going to want more gold to speed up the process? Is the temptation there to club to do just that (even if it doesn't make sense for expending time vs minimum wage job). The choices are (and non are exclusive) 1. Wait a year and play and build a hanger 2. Pay cash (and a large amount) 3. Club because the current system encourages it. Further down I highlight changes that could be made to encourage you to stay in your league by reducing the gold payout for top damage (you are in fact receiving that as a league) and the how the leagues are paid out (daily rather than lump sum). The finer points of the illustration can be argued but the net result is mostly the same I suspect. As for how they inject points, I know that you can't go negative. If you are correct as well (I would love confirm this with actual play) then were injecting points in the system in even more ways. However were still injecting them at the bottom in the hopes that they make their way through the system. We also get some points through rounding errors in squads as well. Is this enough to sustain the system is still an open question. I would argue that NO it is not, and thats why we see out of league matches happening and more frequently on the weekends. As for the league list, I don't doubt that the data your seeing is cached. The engineer in me knows that the person on the other end said "does this need to be real time" when the answer was "NO" or "not exactly" that they are served up some cached data. Im guessing that if you compared with enough people you might find that you have the same data with the exception of your own information and would be a clear indication of a cache. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 13, 2017 19:15:30 GMT -5
Well thought out and your explanation on the noobie points explain why I see level 20 - 25 players at the top of Silver 1 with 1400 and 1500 points. Well thought out and your explanation on the noobie points explain why I see level 20 - 25 players at the top of Silver 1 with 1400 and 1500 points. People willing to spend cash are also in the mix: i.imgur.com/M4mafOn.png (I'm not trying to slight this person, it is a choice) |
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Post by moody on Mar 13, 2017 21:29:06 GMT -5
If matches weren't a zero sum even if it was just +1 then the majority of players would be upward mobile. They would separate into small groups of various skill and not level that would follow each other up the league rankings. One group would move out of silver 2 up to 3 then I while they are climbing silver 3 the next group would climb sliver 2. Soon they would be doing the same with gold 1 and silver 3 until everyone was in the top tiers. One point may not seem like much but considering the number of matches played every day it is. Yes, injecting points into the system would be good, it would avoid a lot of the thrashing that we see now. If the winning beacon capper gets gold the loosing beacon capper should get +1-5 league points (I don't know what the number should be but I'm sure pix could figure it out). This would mean that if the last place loosing player is -20 today they would be -19 or -15 .... the points are added in as an offset and can gather at the top, rather than having to make their way up from the bottom. Being upwardly mobile only works if there is no ceiling. Having a zero sum payout makes sense. It means that the distribution of the population remains reasonably static even as individuals move. What it may mean is if there is little new blood and a lot of people remaining in the game (like this happens) that the tiers start to get higher strength hangers while remaining at the same level depending on skill. eventually even silver and bronze could be all 12/12 hangers - just worse players. It relies on people constantly joining and dropping out. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 13, 2017 22:25:36 GMT -5
Being upwardly mobile only works if there is no ceiling. Having a zero sum payout makes sense. It means that the distribution of the population remains reasonably static even as individuals move. What it may mean is if there is little new blood and a lot of people remaining in the game (like this happens) that the tiers start to get higher strength hangers while remaining at the same level depending on skill. eventually even silver and bronze could be all 12/12 hangers - just worse players. It relies on people constantly joining and dropping out. There is no ceiling apparently, its not like you stop accumulating points when you get to the top, there just aren't any more payouts. People coming in adds points, but people leaving can have a detrimental effect. If all of silver players quit today then those points aren't available in the system. Same issues happen with ELO. People have quit playing chess over it, and points are often added in. |
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 14, 2017 5:44:23 GMT -5
I didn't think of silver! With reduced gold for wins pix could change the rewards for premium. 2 gold for a win, 2x silver across the board. If premium price adjustments were made 2.99 for 10 days, 4.99 for 30, and 9.99 for two months 60 and 29.99 for a year you might see more players buying into the system as it provides actual value then! Which would give even more incentive to tank, as it's easier to grab beacons AND to do damage in lower leagues. My average damage in Silver I was below 300k. In Silver III it's over 400k. In a working league system, there can't be league independent game rewards, or at least league rewards must be much more attractive than game rewards. In another game I played a lot, match-based rewards were completely negligible, but there were daily payouts for leagues that could become very attractive in higher leagues. But this is not easily adapted to War Robots, unfortunately. |
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 14, 2017 5:47:31 GMT -5
Yes, injecting points into the system would be good, it would avoid a lot of the thrashing that we see now. I disagree completely. You just can't assume that people will try to climb leagues just as gravity pulls objects down! There is no incentive in climbing a league, the league rewards are tiny compared to match based rewards. So, there is a strong incentive to stay down in a league where you can easily win. And you have to remove this incentive. Injecting points will accomplish nothing because it does not adress this basic problem. |
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 14, 2017 6:09:17 GMT -5
The instability of the upper tiers is an interesting thought that I didn't think of - you're right that in a closed point system especially at the top that TT players have to come down. It makes more sense on why I see Champion players in Expert. The instability comes from players actively choosing to drop. In some cases you can call it obvious tanking, in some cases it's just dropping to a league where you belong and are competetive, in some cases something in between. To sum it up, we have three issues and all need to be adressed: (1) To make the league system work, there must be a strong incentive to rise in the rankings. Thus, playing against strong opponents in high leagues MUST have higher rewards than playing against weak opponents in lower leagues. Currently, this is actually reversed, as you have MUCH higher payouts in lower leagues. (Case in point: If I nurse my daughters account who plays in recruit league, I can easily get 700k damage with a hangar consisting of one level 7 Gary, one level 6.5 plasma Griffin and one level 6 DB Griff, plus 2 filler robots, and I'll get 10 gold most of the time. With my hangar of level 7.5 robots including Taran Ancilot, 2x ADB Griff, Zeus Carnage, Trident Fury and Plasmahad I average only 300k damage and hardly ever get gold in Silver I/II.) There are several approaches to that. One is to completely adjust the reward system, and there are many suggestions regarding changes of the gold and silver payout, or to introduce a new currency. I don't care how it's done, but it has to be done. (2) Whenever you have a performance based matchmaking, there is incentive to ditch. (If the game is lost anyway, why not "take the loss", get -15 or -20 points and have easier opponents in the next games?) Even if there are strong incentives to rise a league, you will rise up to a point where you are outclassed and can't rise any further, and chances is that you will want to drop down/lose a few games. This incentive must be taken away, it must always be in the best interest of a player to continue fighting even if the battle is not going their way. The only way I see to achieve this is to dramatically reduce the influence of performance on the matchmaking, that is, go to a hangar based matchmaking again, maybe modified a bit by the performance. As an added benefit you would once again be able to run a "lower" hangar, dust off some of those mediums and run a 5/6 medium or light hangar even if your main hangar is close to TT. And of course the hangar based matchmaking would have to be better than the previous one. I actually made a suggestion for a fair hangar bases matchmaking in this post. (3) There might still be attempts to do seal clubbing. If (1) and (2) would be implemented there would be less incentive to do so, but it wouldn't hurt to add some additional anti-tanking measures. The easiest one would be to not change player rating if you lose "too badly", i.e. have say less than 20% damage of the best player on your team, and less than 3 beacons. And this is also old news, as I wrote all of that a month ago. And you know what: All 3 points could be implemented rather efficiently. Note that my proposals are all with actual algorithms that could be coded directly. They would have to be tweaked as they certainly are not optimal, but I'm convinced that it would work with some tweaking. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 14, 2017 11:08:05 GMT -5
I disagree completely. You just can't assume that people will try to climb leagues just as gravity pulls objects down! There is no incentive in climbing a league, the league rewards are tiny compared to match based rewards. So, there is a strong incentive to stay down in a league where you can easily win. And you have to remove this incentive. Injecting points will accomplish nothing because it does not adress this basic problem. Im not sure what your disagreeing with so if some of my assumptions are wrong then please disregard. 1. To address your people won't climb, and there is no incentive for climbing. There is an incentive for climbing (see the above post) there isn't an incentive for STAYING. And why I suggested this "League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments." 2. To further your issue of "people won't climb" I am not really addressing this. I spent the last week running a hanger of lights and having a blast, terrible for my league score but great fun. I had a high win rate by coming in consistently 4 and lower. Lights can make an outsized contribution at lower levels, and net you gold without beating down every player you see. My suggestions don't account for this at all. It is a separate problem and a more complex one. 3. As for match based rewards I also suggested re-aligning those to look like this: " Remove the gold for top damage dealers and give 1Au to each winning team member, and 5Au to the top cap grabber (we would have to have “beacon stealers” threads moved to rants). Change squadding rewards to 1 au per game per squad member per win and move the cap to 50 au a day." 4. "Injecting points will accomplish nothing because it does not adress this basic problem." No it doesn't solve the problem of clubbing, but it will ease some of the pressure on the players in the middle, points need to move all the way up through the system right now, and is probably why you see out of league matches and some people experience lots of rubber banding. ELO, and any closed system need these events to stay function. Sadly tanking was probably proping the system up and why things seem harder/worse on the weekend. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 14, 2017 12:19:27 GMT -5
The instability of the upper tiers is an interesting thought that I didn't think of - you're right that in a closed point system especially at the top that TT players have to come down. It makes more sense on why I see Champion players in Expert. The instability comes from players actively choosing to drop. In some cases you can call it obvious tanking, in some cases it's just dropping to a league where you belong and are competetive, in some cases something in between. To sum it up, we have three issues and all need to be adressed: (1) To make the league system work, there must be a strong incentive to rise in the rankings. Thus, playing against strong opponents in high leagues MUST have higher rewards than playing against weak opponents in lower leagues. Currently, this is actually reversed, as you have MUCH higher payouts in lower leagues. (Case in point: If I nurse my daughters account who plays in recruit league, I can easily get 700k damage with a hangar consisting of one level 7 Gary, one level 6.5 plasma Griffin and one level 6 DB Griff, plus 2 filler robots, and I'll get 10 gold most of the time. With my hangar of level 7.5 robots including Taran Ancilot, 2x ADB Griff, Zeus Carnage, Trident Fury and Plasmahad I average only 300k damage and hardly ever get gold in Silver I/II.) There are several approaches to that. One is to completely adjust the reward system, and there are many suggestions regarding changes of the gold and silver payout, or to introduce a new currency. I don't care how it's done, but it has to be done. (2) Whenever you have a performance based matchmaking, there is incentive to ditch. (If the game is lost anyway, why not "take the loss", get -15 or -20 points and have easier opponents in the next games?) Even if there are strong incentives to rise a league, you will rise up to a point where you are outclassed and can't rise any further, and chances is that you will want to drop down/lose a few games. This incentive must be taken away, it must always be in the best interest of a player to continue fighting even if the battle is not going their way. The only way I see to achieve this is to dramatically reduce the influence of performance on the matchmaking, that is, go to a hangar based matchmaking again, maybe modified a bit by the performance. As an added benefit you would once again be able to run a "lower" hangar, dust off some of those mediums and run a 5/6 medium or light hangar even if your main hangar is close to TT. And of course the hangar based matchmaking would have to be better than the previous one. I actually made a suggestion for a fair hangar bases matchmaking in this post. (3) There might still be attempts to do seal clubbing. If (1) and (2) would be implemented there would be less incentive to do so, but it wouldn't hurt to add some additional anti-tanking measures. The easiest one would be to not change player rating if you lose "too badly", i.e. have say less than 20% damage of the best player on your team, and less than 3 beacons. And this is also old news, as I wrote all of that a month ago. And you know what: All 3 points could be implemented rather efficiently. Note that my proposals are all with actual algorithms that could be coded directly. They would have to be tweaked as they certainly are not optimal, but I'm convinced that it would work with some tweaking. I have addressed your first point and part of your second above. A redistribution of winning pay outs, and how leagues are paid out, I don't think its the final solution but it should be a big disincentive to tanking down to the bottom. The re-alingment should also abate some of the issues you raise in your 2nd point (stop playing and take the loss), there is more gold in fighting for a win and staying put than loosing. Do I think your proposal for MM is bad? No not at all! However, it isn't solving the actual problems. Most of the lights and a number of mediums simply aren't viable, at higher levels. There is a monoculture at the top tier, a small selection of bots are in almost every hanger, and an even smaller selection of weapons. I think that the current molot and punisher buff are meant to break up some of the stalemate at the top (some of the theory crafting says it may). I think that with the increased damage that the performance of all the light robots can be re-examined. I think the knock on will be more griffins for a while, but the dash bot is an attempt to address that. |
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 15, 2017 8:12:09 GMT -5
I disagree completely. You just can't assume that people will try to climb leagues just as gravity pulls objects down! There is no incentive in climbing a league, the league rewards are tiny compared to match based rewards. So, there is a strong incentive to stay down in a league where you can easily win. And you have to remove this incentive. Injecting points will accomplish nothing because it does not adress this basic problem. Im not sure what your disagreeing with so if some of my assumptions are wrong then please disregard. 1. To address your people won't climb, and there is no incentive for climbing. There is an incentive for climbing (see the above post) there isn't an incentive for STAYING. And why I suggested this "League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments." 2. To further your issue of "people won't climb" I am not really addressing this. I spent the last week running a hanger of lights and having a blast, terrible for my league score but great fun. I had a high win rate by coming in consistently 4 and lower. Lights can make an outsized contribution at lower levels, and net you gold without beating down every player you see. My suggestions don't account for this at all. It is a separate problem and a more complex one. 3. As for match based rewards I also suggested re-aligning those to look like this: " Remove the gold for top damage dealers and give 1Au to each winning team member, and 5Au to the top cap grabber (we would have to have “beacon stealers” threads moved to rants). Change squadding rewards to 1 au per game per squad member per win and move the cap to 50 au a day." 4. "Injecting points will accomplish nothing because it does not adress this basic problem." No it doesn't solve the problem of clubbing, but it will ease some of the pressure on the players in the middle, points need to move all the way up through the system right now, and is probably why you see out of league matches and some people experience lots of rubber banding. ELO, and any closed system need these events to stay function. Sadly tanking was probably proping the system up and why things seem harder/worse on the weekend. As for (1), I still don't see how there is no incentive to lose/tank. Daily payouts change nothing, you still award 11 gold a match instead of 14. Either you dramatically increase the daily payouts (in this case you have to explain how you will reduce the other payouts to keep the game balanced) or the payouts are not relevant. And the fact remains, you get more damage, beacons and gold in a low league than in a high league. The fact is that leagues are not skewed because of the closed system, they are skewed because many players actively choose to play below their "natural" level. You're proposing a solution for a problem that is just not there. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 15, 2017 11:56:58 GMT -5
As for (1), I still don't see how there is no incentive to lose/tank. Daily payouts change nothing, you still award 11 gold a match instead of 14. Either you dramatically increase the daily payouts (in this case you have to explain how you will reduce the other payouts to keep the game balanced) or the payouts are not relevant. And the fact remains, you get more damage, beacons and gold in a low league than in a high league. The fact is that leagues are not skewed because of the closed system, they are skewed because many players actively choose to play below their "natural" level. You're proposing a solution for a problem that is just not there. Gold is the biggest motivator to play "below level". After that you get some people who are just going to be jerks and thats another problem... The full system is this: - League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments. To elaborate on this, the lump sum payment doesn't encourage you to STAY there. It is a lot of games to go from high silver to private and back again. You might want to go down for the sake of "winning" but the time it takes to move up and down is going to disuade you due to the rest of the alterations to rewards and the payouts you will miss out on.
- Remove the gold for top damage dealers and give 1Au to each winning team member. Your reward is shifted, to league points and the daily payout --
- 5Au to the top cap grabber (we would have to have “beacon stealers” threads moved to rants)... but there is incentive to get beacons again.
- Change squadding rewards to 1 au per game per squad member per win and move the cap to 50 au a day. This is to drive squadding, and group play: You can stay in your league and earn gold without having to club or move down.
Would you still see people moving up/down levels? Probably in bronze and silver areas sure. But as you get higher (with a larger potential to club) then the number of games and the change to reward distribution would be a disincentive to so so (if you need the gold squad). The daily payout encourages daily activity... and maybe you could collect up to 3 (5? 7?) days of gold for the less active or weekend warriors.
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Post by Ⅎ₹ѺC₭₩ELDEℲ₹ on Mar 15, 2017 12:23:51 GMT -5
We want to be wart free as much as possible...A lot of the ideas here are rearranging the warts and getting over complicated IMHO.
Introducing the The Tank Spanking System.
1. No gold below 2 steps down from a players highest attained league . You would be free to play beyond two steps but it would be for the fun of it.
Example: If you placed in Expert1, Expert 3 would be the bottom gold earning threshold. Below that, you play for fluidity, or fun, or flexibility or what ever the fluffy term may be.
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Post by frunobulax on Mar 15, 2017 14:11:57 GMT -5
Gold is the biggest motivator to play "below level". After that you get some people who are just going to be jerks and thats another problem... The full system is this: - League payouts happen daily rather than once a month, assuming you play your 5 qualifying matches. The amounts should net out to the same if you remained in your league for a month just paid in smaller increments. To elaborate on this, the lump sum payment doesn't encourage you to STAY there. It is a lot of games to go from high silver to private and back again. You might want to go down for the sake of "winning" but the time it takes to move up and down is going to disuade you due to the rest of the alterations to rewards and the payouts you will miss out on.
- Remove the gold for top damage dealers and give 1Au to each winning team member. Your reward is shifted, to league points and the daily payout --
- 5Au to the top cap grabber (we would have to have “beacon stealers” threads moved to rants)... but there is incentive to get beacons again.
- Change squadding rewards to 1 au per game per squad member per win and move the cap to 50 au a day. This is to drive squadding, and group play: You can stay in your league and earn gold without having to club or move down.
Would you still see people moving up/down levels?
Positively. I assume that 90% of the player population is in Gold II and downwards. I'm not sure what the payout is, but I got 50 gold to finish in silver II for the last league. That amounts to 2 gold a day if we round up. Say a clubber plays 20 games a day (which is nothing for a serious clubber) and say he goes down to whatever clubbing level, he'll earn 5-10 gold in every win, and he'll win 80% of his games. Instead of 2 gold a day plus 23 gold from his matches (1.12 per game) he will get well above 100 gold a day, 200 and more gold if he plays as much as some of us do. He'll also get more silver, as he can do more damage down there. In your system, he would gain less gold, but hey - if you go down to a newbie league with level 12 Garys and Stalkers then you'll get the 5 beacon gold in 90% of the cases, so his payout would still be 4-5 gold a game, and maybe 70-80 gold from his 20 matches. That's still a lot more than 25 gold. Now, to create an incentive for our clubber to stay in the league, Pixo would have to pay out 50 gold a day. (And that's for the casual clubber.) This is not happening. And don't forget the silver. I mean, your idea would make things better because it reduces the incentive to club a bit. But it's nowhere near enough. So, this gets us back to my 3-step program: (1) Create a strong incentive to rise in the rankings by devising a new incentive system. (2) Go to a hangar based matchmaking again. (3) Add some additional anti-tanking measures. |
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Post by moody on Mar 15, 2017 14:17:05 GMT -5
We want to be wart free as much as possible...A lot of the ideas here are rearranging the warts and getting over complicated IMHO. Introducing the The Tank Spanking System.1. No gold below 2 steps down from a players highest attained league . You would be free to play beyond two steps but it would be for the fun of it.Example: If you placed in Expert1, Expert 3 would be the bottom gold earning threshold. Below that, you play for fluidity, or fun, or flexibility or what ever the fluffy term may be. In long term closed system this wouldn't work. As hangers and skills peak some people would be pushed back down levels and with no gold available, the rich would get richer and the poor stagnate. |
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Post by zer00eyz on Mar 15, 2017 15:41:13 GMT -5
Positively. I assume that 90% of the player population is in Gold II and downwards. I'm not sure what the payout is, but I got 50 gold to finish in silver II for the last league.That amounts to 2 gold a day if we round up. Your math is a bit off.... Your league payment is the sum of all the leagues that you have played in/through. Otherwise everyone would tank at the end of the month to get the free gold on the way back up. I don't have clear numbers but I suspect your silver II payout is higher than 10Au a day if you break it out. Lets take the optimal we have today, 200 gold over 10 wins, in 1.5 hours. In the new system those same wins would net you 60 gold. Lets assume you stay in your league so +10 then you squad and win 1/2 your matches (another 10) and pull two beacon wins (another 10). Clubbing net's you (a silver II player) 30 gold. That is a massive reduction in incentive already. If you have a gold hanger or higher that number is going to get smaller and smaller. If the league payout for top tier is 2000 gold, thats 66 a day... the incentive to stay put is already there vs moving down to private. Now lets riff on Ⅎ₹ѺC₭₩ELDEℲ₹ idea that we shouldn't do payouts for being more than 2 leagues down... Lets cut the payments for daily tasks if your more than two leagues in from your 5 day average.... and pull them all together 3 off your 30 (15?) day average.... A silver player who stays can net another 60 (+20 if you get 40au tasks) gold a day, fall down its 30, blow it, your losing out on 60 gold a day. This means you would have to play for 3 hours clubbing in private, to break even what you would earn staying in silver, doing your daily tasks, and playing for just 1.5 hours. The same 3 hours would have you earning more. |
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