Horrible Matching in Ladder

[_ChuckD_]

Other BB versions don't have many if any active players that you can match up against, so BB3 is the only option(outside private leagues that is). This option has turned out to be horrible as my newb team with little to no advancement is getting matched against teams with 4-8 players with at least 1 advancement, a big guy, 1 player had essentially 3 advancements 1 skill + 1 stat increase(total 26spp) and clearly had purchased additional rerolls after team was created(that's 2x the normal cost). Makes the game no fun. Not sure if it's a programming issue or crap people/players have found a way to get around matching up with teams more their level so they can beat up less developed teams....either way it ruins it.

[Eyesight]

Let me guess , underworld?
But i am agree that the MM is bad , like i just did get tag against an underworld with a rat ogre , a gutter and bliter , all level 4 for 1100 TV when i was lizardmen with just a block , i did lose only because of skill , honestly that guy was bad and was doing poor choice but was getting rewarded for it , nice tilt ...

[VoodooMike]

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

Not sure if it's a programming issue or crap people/players have found a way to get around matching up with teams more their level so they can beat up less developed teams....either way it ruins it.

You can only be matched with people who are actually there - you seem to be assuming that there are better matches available and you just aren't getting them, when in reality there just isn't anyone else around to create a better match with.

[_ChuckD_]

Ursprungligen skrivet av VoodooMike:

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

Not sure if it's a programming issue or crap people/players have found a way to get around matching up with teams more their level so they can beat up less developed teams....either way it ruins it.

You can only be matched with people who are actually there - you seem to be assuming that there are better matches available and you just aren't getting them, when in reality there just isn't anyone else around to create a better match with.

You would be incorrect as there are tons of games going on throughout each day, you can even watch them if you choose to. The Ladder has different levels, all start at Bronze then move up to Silver n so on. As stated my team(s) are newbs with only a few games under their belt but have been matched against teams that somehow have similar Team Value even though it's clear they have a ton more games based on - skills, team reroll amount and roster size. You can't have a full roster of Chaos which includes 4 Chaos Warriors, 1 Bigguy and 9 beastmen, 4 rerolls, 1 apothecary and 7 players with at least 1 advancement(block of course cuz none of them start with any skill other than horns). So they're either matching high Silver or Gold with beginner level, or players have figured out a way to affect their Team Value so that they ARE matched with less developed teams

[Eyesight]

To be honest and i did see that flaw , there is no checkpoint so you can start at 1600 SR , throw on purpose to start at 1000 SR.

The only roster who can actually do that for very cheap is underworld but that because of how they work , they basically start with 900TV so have advantage against rookie team.

You also have dwarf which start with a bunch of skill and the borring guard/mb spam.

[Imlyn]

MM would be better if they take the number of matches of the team into account, and not the TV...

[Eyesight]

I agree with that , when you get tag if you face an Underworld with a rookie team and this team has highter TV than you , you known that you have a big problem.

[_ChuckD_]

The issue wasn't Underworld, the issue was that the team had clearly played alot more games earned a bunch of SPP based on the # of players with skill advancement / earned gold to buy post creation rerolls etc. yet were being matched with a team with a few games and still in the lowest rank of Ladder. So either the MM concept of Ladder needs to be looked into or something is being exploited.

[Percussigant]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

MM would be better if they take the number of matches of the team into account, and not the TV...

Well, no. That is the whole point of TV and SR as matchmaking metrics. The matchmaker will try to match you with a team that is close to your own team on those two criteria. As I understand it, it will first check for a team that is close to you in terms of SR, then refine its search by adding the TV factor into the equation.

I don't know what OP's SR is, but as a rule of thumb, rookie teams are usually better off staying at whatever the bare minimum TV for them to be functional is, until they grab enough skills to afford stepping up without risking facing hyperdeveloped teams. Knowing the sweet spot of your roster is extremely important.

OP, chances are that you are being matched with teams you feel are overdeveloped compared to yours because you have been developing your own team too fast. As a rule of thumb (there are obviously exceptions and differences from team to team), try going for 3 rerolls, an apothecary, 11 players only, and at least 4 skills before adding more stuff to the team. You really want to trim your TV to be as lean as possible at first.

[VoodooMike]

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

You would be incorrect..

No, I would not.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

...as there are tons of games going on throughout each day, you can even watch them if you choose to. The Ladder has different levels, all start at Bronze then move up to Silver n so on.

That changes nothing. A full match of Blood Bowl takes an hour, sometimes more, while matchmaking takes however long is required for the expanding rating difference limit of you and an opponent to overlap. That there are plenty of matches occurring over the course of the day doesn't mean there are plenty of potential opponents queueing for a new match at the same time you are - instead look for matches that began during the period you were waiting for a match, and see how many of THOSE there are.

Small pool sizes have been a peril of the entire franchise, going back almost 15 years now. Even when the number of daily players was much higher, the pool sizes were never particularly large.. so again... you can only be matches with people who are there.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

As stated my team(s) are newbs with only a few games under their belt but have been matched against teams that somehow have similar Team Value even though it's clear they have a ton more games based on - skills, team reroll amount and roster size.

Matchmaking is based on SR, not strictly on TV. Neither one of them is a wonderful metric for matchmaking, but even if the metric was great it is still restricted to the people in the matchmaking pool - it can't magically manifest more people to give the matching system a better range of potential opponents.

Making your team TV-efficient has always been a benefit in Blood Bowl - making your team stronger than most teams in the same TV range gives you an advantage in matches going forward. That's not cheating, that's good team management.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

So they're either matching high Silver or Gold with beginner level, or players have figured out a way to affect their Team Value so that they ARE matched with less developed teams

Heh, there's no cheat involved in TV efficiency, so if their TV is similar to yours but they have a stronger team then chances are you're suffering from poor team management - TV bloat.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

MM would be better if they take the number of matches of the team into account, and not the TV...

This is proven to be false. We did extensive analytics on matchmaking metrics back in the BB1 days, and "games played" difference as a matchmaking metric proved worse as a predictor of match outcome than TV difference did.

The issue is that number of games played's relationship to actual team performance begins to diverge wildly very quickly, so that that farther you go from 0, the less helpful it is in guessing which team is a better performer than the other. This was borne out by the statistical analyses of more than a million matches on BB1, BB2, and FUMBBL.

[_ChuckD_]

Ursprungligen skrivet av VoodooMike:

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

You would be incorrect..

No, I would not.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

...as there are tons of games going on throughout each day, you can even watch them if you choose to. The Ladder has different levels, all start at Bronze then move up to Silver n so on.

That changes nothing. A full match of Blood Bowl takes an hour, sometimes more, while matchmaking takes however long is required for the expanding rating difference limit of you and an opponent to overlap. That there are plenty of matches occurring over the course of the day doesn't mean there are plenty of potential opponents queueing for a new match at the same time you are - instead look for matches that began during the period you were waiting for a match, and see how many of THOSE there are.

Small pool sizes have been a peril of the entire franchise, going back almost 15 years now. Even when the number of daily players was much higher, the pool sizes were never particularly large.. so again... you can only be matches with people who are there.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

As stated my team(s) are newbs with only a few games under their belt but have been matched against teams that somehow have similar Team Value even though it's clear they have a ton more games based on - skills, team reroll amount and roster size.

Matchmaking is based on SR, not strictly on TV. Neither one of them is a wonderful metric for matchmaking, but even if the metric was great it is still restricted to the people in the matchmaking pool - it can't magically manifest more people to give the matching system a better range of potential opponents.

Making your team TV-efficient has always been a benefit in Blood Bowl - making your team stronger than most teams in the same TV range gives you an advantage in matches going forward. That's not cheating, that's good team management.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

So they're either matching high Silver or Gold with beginner level, or players have figured out a way to affect their Team Value so that they ARE matched with less developed teams

Heh, there's no cheat involved in TV efficiency, so if their TV is similar to yours but they have a stronger team then chances are you're suffering from poor team management - TV bloat.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

MM would be better if they take the number of matches of the team into account, and not the TV...

This is proven to be false. We did extensive analytics on matchmaking metrics back in the BB1 days, and "games played" difference as a matchmaking metric proved worse as a predictor of match outcome than TV difference did.

The issue is that number of games played's relationship to actual team performance begins to diverge wildly very quickly, so that that farther you go from 0, the less helpful it is in guessing which team is a better performer than the other. This was borne out by the statistical analyses of more than a million matches on BB1, BB2, and FUMBBL.

What is SR? While I understood what you were saying about Teams available at time of queing up, it still comes down to terrible MM if they're allowing more advanced teams to then match up with newbies based on whatever formula they've come up with. And that is my point in posting

[Eyesight]

SR is what you ranking you are , it's just something they did add in bloodbowl 3 that wasn't existing before.
It's just rank , bronze , silver , gold , plat , diamond , master.
Issue with that is when they start you at the highest rank you was with a rookie team , you up way to fast.

[_ChuckD_]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Eyesight:

SR is what you ranking you are , it's just something they did add in bloodbowl 3 that wasn't existing before.
It's just rank , bronze , silver , gold , plat , diamond , master.
Issue with that is when they start you at the highest rank you was with a rookie team , you up way to fast.

Oh then the programming is definitely messed up - my team had 3-4 games and was in Silver but the team I played was faaaaaaaaaaaaaar more developed and likely was in Gold or Higher. The number of players who'd gotten skill advancements, a bigguy and the extra rerolls clearly purchased after team was originally created(2x original cost)........yea they have messed up the match making or the design of Ladder. No way that team was in the same tier.
As for mismanaging team, I'm (a) too experienced to building a team in BB (b) it was literally a newb team 2-3 games under their belt so not enough SPPs / Gold to have done any managing at all lol.

[Imlyn]

This is proven to be false. We did extensive analytics on matchmaking metrics back in the BB1 days, and "games played" difference as a matchmaking metric proved worse as a predictor of match outcome than TV difference did.

Do you agree that private leagues are more balanced than ladder ? IMO it's because you face teams with the same number of matchs.
Maybe they can take both into account ?
Furthermore i don't speak about outcome of the match, no sense in a game like BB totaly asymetrical, i speak about interest of the match. With MM based on number of match, my newbie team will never fall against dwarfs with 5/6 MB Guard etc... Losing is not the problem, i only want a chance to win... (i play a match against dwarfs with 30 matches, my team have less than 10, the TV was similar, it's just not possible...)

Anyway, if they keep the ladder like this, i think i'll stop playing the ladder...
Ok i stop complaining ^^

[Eyesight]

Imo their ladder is a complete faillure anyway , they did put a limit on TV to limit long grind team such as chaos and nurgle which doesn't really work and you can grind way to easily.
Im not complaining about winning strike but when you start at 1600 sr , you just need 10 matchs to be master with an underdevelopped team.

They just should apply match limit per teams like 50 and also concession penalty to stop people from conceding , there is no downside at doing it currently so people do it frequently
They can keep the winning strike mechanic.

[VoodooMike]

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

What is SR?

I think it stands for Skill Rating or some such.. it is their hybrid elo system that doesn't work well at all, especially since they reduce or negate rating losses in early tiers (so that unlike elo, it isn't a zero-sum system). Even elo would be ill suited for Blood Bowl for many reasons that have been explained in other threads.

SR is what determines if you're bronze, silver, gold, or whatever tier. Matchmaking is based on a combination of SR and TV.

Ursprungligen skrivet av _ChuckD_:

While I understood what you were saying about Teams available at time of queing up, it still comes down to terrible MM if they're allowing more advanced teams to then match up with newbies based on whatever formula they've come up with. And that is my point in posting

No game is going to simply give you no matches.. and if there isn't a match that is "more comfortable" for you, you're going to get the match that is closest based on their criteria. People have this bizarre belief that they'd rather sit for hours waiting for a "good match" than get a prompt "bad match" but not only are the concepts of good and bad here often quite subjective, but people don't sit and wait for a long time... they close a game and play something else.

It doesn't matter what matchmaking criteria is used if there isn't a better match to be made.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

Do you agree that private leagues are more balanced than ladder ? IMO it's because you face teams with the same number of matchs.

You're certainly entitled to your own opinions... but you're not entitled to your own facts, and that's what we're dealing in here.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

Maybe they can take both into account ?

Or hey, maybe they should absolutely not do that because the math (which is based on facts and is not simply giving you its opinion) tells us that it leads to less balanced matches than working from TV difference.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

Furthermore i don't speak about outcome of the match, no sense in a game like BB totaly asymetrical, i speak about interest of the match.

That's stupid. Match outcomes are an objective metric while "interest of the match" is some wishy-washy BS floating around in your head. Nobody is going to create a magic system that is somehow based on YOU looking at matches and giving them your subjective thumbs up or thumbs down.

Ursprungligen skrivet av Imlyn:

With MM based on number of match, my newbie team will never fall against dwarfs with 5/6 MB Guard etc... Losing is not the problem, i only want a chance to win... (i play a match against dwarfs with 30 matches, my team have less than 10, the TV was similar, it's just not possible...)

So you mean... the outcome of the match? When we talk about metrics being predictive of match outcome we're talking about the distance between two ratings and how they affect the probability of specific outcomes across a VAST field of real-world data on actual matches that were played. The difference in games played does a WORSE job of that than the difference in team TVs across the spectrum of games that get played.