Ranked Game Matchmaking - AIs or Humans?

I was wondering if the highest ranking player (1700 at the moment) have anyone to play with. Or just sits there bored beating Mom all day

 

I do not play against AI since the patch that enabled me to do so. It is just unfun

 

I was wondering the same thing as BFrost. Does that become a vicious cycle where they just keep beating Mom and keep rising higher and higher above the rest of the field?

 

My first 3-5 matches are pretty much just Mom. I get 1 point per match and 29 for a lost. The spread of opponents I can face can range up to 500 ELO below me. Maintaining high rating in the long run is hard due to the random nature of the game. I don't see this being a problem. Don't get me wrong, my rating is over inflated. Anyone over 1350+ ELO rating I consider an even match even though the risk/reward doesn't reflect it.

I'm more concern about beginners gaining rating too fast as it's not hard to reach 1000 from AI alone. @ 1000 It's not hard to get matched against someone with 1200+ ELO. The difference in skill there is pretty great. I highly doubt new players like that feeling too much.

If I turn off AI matches, I usually wait about 7 minutes for my first few matches of the day. That's quite a long wait. Even waiting 5 minutes between matches is long. Higher ranking players shouldn't be punished and forced to wait longer than that. It doesn't change with more players either. There will always be players above the normal distribution with a smaller selection of opponents.

In the long term, gaining/losing points for AI doesn't matter. In the short term, I think it has a negative impact overall. It might be best to just remove rating changes for AI matches but still allow them to be an opponent when none is available.

 

Yeah, wait times are too long even if "play vs AI" option is checked. 5 minutes wait, then play vs Mom. Not fun
Also, I really hope that we will have some kind of tournaments one day. Where matchmaker will not look at ELO rating, just create random parings swiss-style.

 

I hope to see a structure like this available: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/rule-of-law-magic-on-demand/

Basic idea would be you can join a continuously active "tournament" at any time. You get matched with someone with the same "tournament" record as you. So to win the big prize for winning a 4 round tournament, you have to go 4-0, beating first another player at 0-0, then one at 1-0, then one at 2-0, then one at 3-0. But if you have a middling record, you get paired for a match with someone with a similar record. And if you want to play one game a day, you can, and if you want to play 4 games in a row and immediately sign up for the tournament again, you can--you're matched based on record, not based on waiting for the next pairing in an actual bracket. (If 4 rounds isn't enough to adequately challenge the top players/find good matches for the worst players, you can make it 5 or 6 rounds--doesn't really matter, as long as there are enough players so that matches at each record fire in reasonable time). Winning a tournament (going 4-0) would be an accomplishment, but even the worst players have a reasonable shot of winning a game or two, while getting to see how the top play.

Ideally, I'd like to see both a "constructed" on-demand tournament queue and a "sealed" style tournament queue--give each player at the start of the tournament X number of phantom chests or items (maybe 1 Legendary, 3 Epic, 5 rare, etc. or something), then let them build their party however they like with what they've got. At the end of the tournament, all of those items evaporate, but they get whatever prizes they won during the tournament to keep. That would let people play in an environment where Johnny Grinds Every Day and Jane Plays Rarely But Well can compete on a fair playing field. (Obviously, there could be a pizza or gold entrance fee, if Blue Manchu thinks that would be good; one option would be pay a bunch of pizza for a non-phantom version where you keep everything you get). There could also be a draft style, where you pass chests, taking picks of items (maybe oversized chests that start with 10 or 15 items. But it's desirable to keep the total number of formats relatively low--better to have 3 formats (say, matchmaker by ELO, constructed on demand tournament, and phantom sealed on demand tournament) that fire well and matchmake quickly than 10 formats with long waits for all of them.

 

Wow, that's a lot of awesome ideas!
Especially love draft and sealed variants.

 

I (1200) get matched sometimes to people 900-1000, and it is totally unfair. They almost always get decimated. Maybe if you are below 1k you don't play anyone ranked higher than you.

Also remember mum is an NPC ai. She has set moves and behaviours. Once you learn them, you should be able to beat her.

 

I kind of wonder about the algorithm sometimes. A friend and I both hit the queue for a ranked game within seconds of each other, and had within 100 or 200 of each other's Elos, but we got matched against the computer. Given that the system has no way of knowing we're friends... what's the story there?

 

If the computer is ranked closer to you than your friend is, it will hit that first. I don't know the specifics so all numbers i use are guesstimations, but it's generally something like this:
when you hit the button it looks for someone ranked the same as you. every few seconds it increases the spread by a few points, so for example after you've been in the queue for 10 seconds you will be matched with anyone 10 points higher or lower than you. After 30 seconds it's 30 points higher or lower, etc. If the computer player (they have ratings too) falls inside that range before anyone else does then that's who you get. Note that the other people in the queue are doing the same thing, so it might be that when your ranges overlap you get matched, or it might only be when you get to each other's actual ratings.

 

Also I think you can't play someone twice in a row?

 

If this was the case, why would you have to wait for the timer to count all the way down to play an AI? Doesn't seem very intuitive.

 

So does the matchmaking take into account gear in any way? It can take me hours to actually find someone I can beat that isn't the AI. The reason seems to be that even though they're ranked similarly to me, they've acquired far better gear.

 

Most ranking systems are done pure on the current rank of the opponents. I would not assume this was any different.

In your situation it sounds like you end up playing the AI a lot. If that's true your ranking may be artificially boosted so when you play against other players (who perhaps play when more people are on and match less with AI) they are at a slightly higher power level. They may also have been testing the B squad builds and gotten their ranking down but still have some good cards... OR you're actually a skilled player that is getting good ranking based on your play, but have reached the pinnacle of where your current cards can take you in the ranking.

 

I wish I was playing against the AI a lot. Still that is where a fair amount of my rank is coming from, not because I'm facing them repeatedly, but because AI is the only one I'm victorious with repeatedly. While I wouldn't count on being a skilled player, I think I'm using my abilities about as well as I can. So, I guess all of those are things that the matchmaking system is passing by and is making pvp seem unusually frustrating.

 

I usually don't have to wait for the full countdown to get an AI unless i've just played the AI. It tries to avoid having you play the same opponent over and over.

 

Hrm, I'll keep an eye on it. I don't believe I've ever matched with an AI without having the timer run all the way down -- even if I haven't played an AI in the last 6 matches/few days.

 

it's fine for beta testing, but you should put AI in casual matchmaking only. If AI are too easy, they'll ruin the ranking system completely by putting people against harder opponents just because the AI bloated your rank. also unless the AI is constantly changes their team/units, people will eventually find combinations that exploit/win vs that specific AI more often than not, where in the case vs humans it would always be diverse so you couldn't find an anti.

 

In my last five matches, matches 1, 4, and 5 were against the same opponent. Matches 2 and 3 were against Mom. It would be nice not to play the same person quite so frequently.

 

What was the available pool of players to draw from when this happened?