Thread: Build 1.6.21
#21
Nothing to say we may not have to wipe ranking someday, specially if we change enough ways that we're calculating them. Then we'll just call that "season" done and start a new "Season". Probably record the victors of that season like we do with the Tournaments. Right now *we are not focused on any wipes...but who knows? If it makes for a more fair situation we will, of course, move in that direction.Originally Posted by Yellow
Edit : removed response on wipes because its unrelated to the build and well, actually does not interest me much.
Thanks Arnie for the detailed explanation of the new matchmaking.
It sounds really good. The issue is that many of the players today had an experience that is quite different from what you describe:
- High elo players (1400+) taking not 7 more seconds, but more than 5 full minutes to find a match. Without having a power of 12 or anything close. (NB : my own experience at 1400 and 6 power was relatively smooth; significantly increased wait, but not at the unbearable levels rzeznicc or others experienced)
- Many growing players complaining in the chat about being repeatedly pitted against 6 power teams when sporting only 2-3 power teams themselves. It might have been a temporary, almost-empty server moment thing, but the number of people relating the same type of experience was uncanny.
I fully support the system as you describe it (to the exception maybe of the window expansion rate), it's an elegant solution to a problem that needed to be addressed, but I'm not convinced it is working as intended.
Also, let me reiterate my concerns expressed in another thread a bit earlier :Does the matchmaking include a system to ensure variety in opponents ? If so, how does it work ?On a more general level, I'm concerned that high elo players will only get to play with a small number of other high elo players. Since not many of them are connected at the same time, this leads to rematches and possibly playing noone but eachother for whole sessions. (just moments ago rzeznicc and I were pitted against each other for two matches in a row)
At any rate, thanks for the update, I do have reservations regarding the matchmaking but its globally a very good one. Thanks
Last edited by Butters; 03-08-2013 at 10:44 AM.
Since there were basically only replies about the MM, I just would like to bring this up again. Is there a way to distinguish rank 1 from rank 2 (or 3) units? I think it makes a big difference for my movements if that BM on the other side has a range of 7 or 8...
On the unit's turn, look at the purple lightning thing at the bottom of the list of stats. That's the only way to see the rank right now, I think.
It was said by Arnie itself that the idea have been floating around for a wile. That does not means however that it will be implemented as i suggested, but most certanly 1 thing or another on that regard will be done, am tipping either max 3 of same unit class, or max 2 of same unit upgrade... those 2 are the most likely to happen. Since the majority of the community voted and agreed on those.
Yes that is my beef, and as u self recognised it is/has been much easier to climb it at launch that it will be later on.
For that same reason, once balance issues regarding OP builds are adressed + Matchmaking works a bitt better than it does right now, and the biggest part of the player-base is known with the ingame mechanics it will be way more chalangeing if not almost "imposible" to get a 100+ winning streak.
I have myself a 20 winnign streak, and am quite sure more capable players than i can get 40 or even 50 withow noob hunting or exploiting ingame mechanics, but when it goes over that numbers u start to wonder.
I have been competitive in a few strategy games, such as Napoleon Total War and Shogun Total War(easy between top 10 best players on any of them during my peek days) and played a couple more in less competitive way such as Company of Heroes, among others, but so far a single winning streak of 100 is yet to be seen in any of them.... So am quite sure that such thing on a balanced enviroment aint so easy to archive, if ever posible...
Hi Arnie:Nothing to say we may not have to wipe ranking someday, specially if we change enough ways that we're calculating them. Then we'll just call that "season" done and start a new "Season". Probably record the victors of that season like we do with the Tournaments. Right now *we are not focused on any wipes...but who knows? If it makes for a more fair situation we will, of course, move in that direction.
Thanks for the reply. The reason why i suggested the wipe its becouse since yesterday i have seen a couple of threads and comments about this, such as this one among others.
About ur last line, I do belive that such a wipe(a 1 time thing) on at least "Win Streaks"(wich is the less likely to normalise itself, ever) would make for a more fair situation as am sure the game will become more stable and matchmaking will work in a better way than it does right now with future updates, thus, the less things that can be exploited, the fewer the chances of 100+ win streaks to happen, making it almost imposible to advance on that ladder, at least in comparison to how easy it is right now(if following the 3 paths i explained).
Last edited by Yellow; 03-08-2013 at 11:03 AM.
#26
Good point, and yes, we've already discussed having a 5 minute cap on playing the same player again. This has not yet been implemented but it's on our radar.
#27
Only the major banner in the lower left when they move. If you see a 3 next to their ability icon it means they're rank 3.
That's just for now though. We will soon be adding an info bar for when you click units in the field. It will show ALL their stats and from their ability stat you will know their rank. Stay tuned...
#28
Win Streaks: I can't believe, even playing new players, someone can get 100+ win streak. But yeah we'll look into all of this, but we don't want to make changes until we see how the changes we just implemented take root. We would only wipe if we feel we're now out of the weeds on some of these issues and know we have a more fair system.
Thanks for all the feedback!
Ok that pretty much adresses all my concerns
I did read your post... and didn't agree, so I replied. My point was (is) that you can't guarantee balance by dealing with the 4x issue. Other, unexpected imbalance problems are likely to arise in the future, and doing a single reset just few weeks after game launch* - before the majority of imbalance issues are likely to be ironed out - is naïve in my eyes.
* Obviously assuming the 4x issue is dealt with relatively soon...
For these reasons it seems to me we cannot guarantee a fair win streak record board anytime soon, so I disagree with your suggestions (although I am generally for a win streak record reset when the game has attained an OK balance and is unlikely to change drastically).
Now, I am aware that the discussion has moved on since my last reply, and I have no intention of hi-jacking the thread, but I didn't like the tone you opened your post with.
In conclusion, I believe we agree that the "longest win streak" boards could benefit from a reset (or more) in the future, though not necessarily on the details of when/if this would be sensible. However, being aware of Stoic's ideas, I still don't see a point in full resets of the boards (though the Overall ELO board could benefit from degeneration over time with inactivity).
[unrelated]
As a side note, assuming* this has already been reported a number of times [hence not worthy a thread], it seems that none of my level 1 units can be upgraded further (their kill counts are all yellow ~ even the Thrasher with 16 kills).
*I'm a bit busy at the moment, so I haven't had much time to play the last 10 (or so) days.
[/unrelated]
My post clearly said that the reset/wipe should not be done right now, and that it should be a 1 time thing, so both of ur questions gave the impresion that u either did not read what i posted, or taht u did but decided to ignore it and ask for the sake of asking anyway.
I don't want to be rude, but what u like and what u don't like is up to u, i meant no offence with my "tone" but if some was taken so be it.
Once again thats why i made special remarks on the "Win Streak Leaderboard", as well as included posible exeptions of leaderboards that dont need a wipe.... Werent those included on my original post or?
Are u using only 2 diferent kinds of unit on ur build? If u had clicked on all units u would have realised that not all units have rank 2 and 3 unlocked, so far only RM, BW, WM and SM have both level 2 and 3 unlocked.
PS: the tone on this one was actually intensional as i did no liked neither the tone of urs.
Last edited by Yellow; 03-08-2013 at 02:07 PM.
By "tone" I was referring to the assumption that I had not read your post. I don't take offence from disagreement.. that's what the forum is [partly] for.
As for what you have or haven't said, your posts are not unambiguous, so my comments have possibly pointed out inconsistencies, but mainly stated my own opinion. Not everything I say is a direct disagreement with your arguments/opinions. As mentioned in my previous post, I am of the impression that we largely agree on the issue.
Thanks, but it seems to work properly now (although the Thrasher and most other units are, as you pointed out, not available for upgrade).
I did not have a problem with your tone in this post.
Anyways, my intention is not to hijack the thread, so - since I believe we both have stated our opinions - I will not post further on the issue here... if you want to discuss it (or the way I formulate my forums posts) in more detail, you could PM me (but are obviously not in any way obliged to do so).
I'm wondering if there's a chance some kind of exploit is being used. I was playing a high ranked player yesterday. The match went into pillage mode but before I could land the killing blow my opponent appeared to lag out and I was awarded the victory. When I checked their win streak it appeared not to have been affected. If a player lags out does it count as their loss?
I could have got his all wrong of course (hence not naming names). But the fact my opponent seemed to drop out just before he lost - and keep his win streak - seemed a little suspicious.
No it does not, which is only fair.
I myself had some luck with that as I CTDd only a few turns before being beaten square (by ANTI-) as I was, iirc, at 51-streak. I went on to 65 with the bonus chance.
However if the "lagout" can be induced by the player that is a big problem; for streaks and for W/L ratio. It should be checked if a CTD can be faked by terminating the client.exe process, for example. If so, not sure how it would be achieved, but it should count as a loss rather than a nothing.
Agreed. Again its perfectly possible that this player just got lucky with lag and I've got the wrong end of the stick. But it would rather undermine the ELO system if people were quitting the game so their loses weren't being registered.
Are all the win streak players just not facing each other?
So I hadn't touched Factions since the beta, and not much then, but I tried it this weekend again. I tooled around with the default team for a while, promoted my archer, messed around some more. I played four matches and won two. Then, I read this thread. (I hope the devs have, as well.)
I tried out three raiders and the default thrasher and two Varl warriors... and proceeded to win about twenty straight matches. Since I promoted one of the warriors to a warhawk, I haven't had one that was even close. I'm a little bit disturbed by how dominant this build is; in my last game I beat a rank 5 team with my rank 3 team of warhawk, warmaster, thrasher, raiderx3 with room to spare.
Basically it seems to come down to two things: archers are not sufficiently effective, and warhawks are out of control. Maybe I just haven't played anyone who uses archers effectively yet, and as I rank up we'll see about that. But, at the moment I can't see how any other unit can do could possibly compare to the warhawk getting to use the most powerful attack in the game *twice* per turn. I'm not even very good at this game, but builds that include archers can't seem to take this raider/warrior build at all.
I have a suggestion: in addition to the cap of 2 Varl per team, I suggest a cap of 1 of each advanced Varl class per team (one warhawk, one warmaster, one warleader) and a cap of 3 of each advanced human class (no more than 3 thrashers, etc.). This would force more diversity and tone down the min/maxing a bit. I've actually promoted my other warrior to warmaster just because I wanted a colorful team with less than total cheese; but, I think a cap like this would mix things up quite a bit for everyone.
Hey bruther, check this thread out https://stoicstudio.com/forum/showthr...estion-Request I think you'll find the discussion there pretty relevant to your concerns.
that which does not kill you often leaves you handicapped
To add to what bruther has said - there is a huge difference between rank0 and rank1 characters. So that warhawk can even be counted as two characters - he has effectively double damage in low-ranks cause nothing really stands against his 16str, and nothing can really hurt warhawk himself cause maximum you get 12str warrior and you still need to close the distance to warhawk between those raiders.
If you don't know where to put it - put it in the pillage
Steelhammer Tribune issues collected here
Some of my Factions games can be observed here
Also possible streaming at http://www.twitch.tv/netnazgul
@netnazgul : rank 0s have the same counters for warhawk as rank1s - armorbreak with WP, puncture, and very careful placement.
An update regarding matchmaking (my experience of it):
Again, today, tried to find a balanced match at 1400 elo and a power 6 team. This is the time of the day when Steam user count peaks so I would expect Factions lobby to be well populated, but then again it doesnt really seem to be.
Anyway, first match was against a power 1 (sic) team, the guy even had lower elo than me (1300 something). Of course the match was very onesided.
Second match : same guy. Same power 1 team. Second squashing.
Third match : tell the guy to field a power 6 team for this one ; sure enough, was matched to the same personfor 3 matches in a row.
Of course the unbalanced match is much more of an issue here than having the same ooponent x times in a row, but this episode comforts me in the idea that current matchmaking is not working as intended.
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