Other High Rank Rift Matchmaking Feedback

[Yujipooji]

I’ve mostly been hovering in D1 for the past few months, and I was hoping to give my feedback on the matchmaking changes.

1.) Much better at the top. By my estimate, the top 10 fighters are pretty much truly the 10 best players in the server. The problem is, it’s kinda hard to tell how much of it is because of matchmaking, or because these 10 dudes really stepped up their games and are stomping anyone they get matched with outside of each other. And I do know from rifting them that they’re much stronger now than a month or so ago. Nonetheless, I am really happy that at least at the very top, things are the way they should be.

2.) The main problem you wanted to address which was people climbing ranks where they shouldn’t be with weaker collections has persisted. In relation to this, I am also still matching with golds and d4’s with significantly stronger rosters than some d3’s, d2’s and even d1’s. My point is, in high gold ranks and above, matchmaking by roster strength is still unfairly benefitting weaker rosters and oppressing those with stronger ones (outside of the top 10-12 players).

3.) The changes have been a step in the right direction though, since my complaints regarding point #2 have been happening less than before. Still, I am hoping for even more weight to be given towards rift rating instead of roster strength when matchmaking, at the very least starting in high gold ranks.

4.) Just a thought: What would happen if matchmaking starting diamond was just a closed cage match among the top 200? This could be a good test to see if the diamond rankings are well-deserved, while simultaneously giving top players in gold enough breathing room to eventually climb. It also solves the problem of weird mismatches where gold 2’s are getting matched with d1’s and stuff.

 

[ZeoW]

I really think "closed caged" matches needs to be implemented at every rank. I'm at Gold 3 and got paired with Diamond fighters 4x in a row yesterday. The match was not unbeatable but was definitely a big challenge. I wouldn't mind the challenge if I was in Diamond rank or even Gold 1 myself but I'm not. It makes climbing up difficult.

As it is now, the best way to climb up is to have 3-4 high level fighters and low-ish level fighters for the rest. There's no incentive to have a diverse roster as it will only increase your average fighter score and pair you up with difficult fighters.

In my opinion, unfair matches is sometimes needed to allow higher level players to climb up to the rank where they should be. In the context of extreme difference in collection strength, for the "weaker" player, they shouldn't be penalized for matching with a stronger one. Or maybe they could be compensated somehow? Extra rift coins?

 

[Blimeylimey]

I can add one player’s data to this. I started tracking matches since the first matchmaking update.
Methods (you can skip this part):
Here, I’ll split the data into three categories: matches against D2 and below, matches against D1, and matches against top three. Rankings are based on the displayed rank at match start. This means where my opponent finished at end of the previous season. Exception: top three also includes known former top three regardless of rank displayed. These are specifically: Princess Celestia, OddLegend, HeGunz, Kulczewski, Yujipooji, diasuke when I recognize the name. Other names in non-Roman alphabet were not tracked in this category.

Format is wins-losses

Previous patch:
Top 3: 3-21
D1: 3-6
D2 and below: 35-3
Results: 5 weeks D2, 2 weeks D3

Current patch:
Top 3: 3-3
D1: 9-4
D2 and below: 39-2
Results: 8 weeks D1

Some observations: previous patch, I met top three players about 1/3 or all matches. Current patch it’s about 1/10.
Win rate against D1 and top three has gone up on the new patch, though sample size for top three is small.

Opinions:
Based on strength of collection and what I know about the top 3 players, I certainly deserve to match with them under either patch despite my terrible record against them in the previous patch.
My poor record against top 3 is the reason I consider myself to have weak mechanics but strong collection.
Strong record against D2 and below suggests I should probably be no lower than D2.
I consider the 2 weeks at D3 to be evidence that strength based matchmaking makes the ladder system unbalanced.

 

[Liam]

@Yujipooji,

Appreciate the feedback! Happy to hear that things are beginning to sort themselves out at the top ranks, but there are still more changes we'd like to make to Rift Battles even still.

Just a thought: What would happen if matchmaking starting diamond was just a closed cage match among the top 200? This could be a good test to see if the diamond rankings are well-deserved, while simultaneously giving top players in gold enough breathing room to eventually climb. It also solves the problem of weird mismatches where gold 2’s are getting matched with d1’s and stuff.

It doesn't work exactly like you described, but matchmaking by collection strength does begin to fall apart (get ignored) at the top ranks as described here. At the moment, the threshold for when that starts could possibly stand to be tuned if Diamond tier players are looking for this kind of behavior. We'll be considering tweaking this mechanic in the future.

Do you personally prefer a close Rift Rating with your opponent (1980 vs 1990), over a fair match with even collections?

I really think "closed caged" matches needs to be implemented at every rank. I'm at Gold 3 and got paired with Diamond fighters 4x in a row yesterday.

Unfair matches is sometimes needed to allow higher level players to climb up to the rank where they should be.

This is how it was when Rift Battles first rolled out. The majority of players contacting us and giving us feedback (especially in Silver or lower) didn't agree with that.

Even after matchmaking by collection strength to help weed out the very unfair matches, we still receive a lot of feedback to fix and restrict the matchmaking even further if there's even a small discrepancy in collection strength. It's a tricky balance, but we're currently exploring solutions to try and make both types of players as happy as possible.

 

[ZeoW]

@Liam

Appreciate the reply and thanks for reading!

Perhaps one solution could simply be to not allow non-Diamond players to get paired with Diamond players. Since in the Diamond tier, players will be matched regardless of collection strength, those with weak collection strength will be naturally weeded out. (EDIT: just realized this is the closed caged matches in Diamond tier exactly like what Yuji proposed.)

At the end of the day, the devs have the data and I trust you guys in finding the best solution. Can't wait for the next update!

 

[Yujipooji]

@Yujipooji,

Appreciate the feedback! Happy to hear that things are beginning to sort themselves out at the top ranks, but there are still more changes we'd like to make to Rift Battles even still.


It doesn't work exactly like you described, but matchmaking by collection strength does begin to fall apart (get ignored) at the top ranks as described here. At the moment, the threshold for when that starts could possibly stand to be tuned if Diamond tier players are looking for this kind of behavior. We'll be considering tweaking this mechanic in the future.

Do you personally prefer a close Rift Rating with your opponent (1980 vs 1990), over a fair match with even collections?


This is how it was when Rift Battles first rolled out. The majority of players contacting us and giving us feedback (especially in Silver or lower) didn't agree with that.

Even after matchmaking by collection strength to help weed out the very unfair matches, we still receive a lot of feedback to fix and restrict the matchmaking even further if there's even a small discrepancy in collection strength. It's a tricky balance, but we're currently exploring solutions to try and make both types of players as happy as possible.

Thank you liam for replying, hope you follow up on this response as well. (PS, you were awesome at combobreaker)


1.) Yes, I absolutely prefer closer rift rating differentials and looser roster strength restrictions (preferably no restrictions), starting around gold 1 and above. G1/D4 in particular i’ve noticed have a lot of players that should be higher in rank, while D2/3 are where i’ve noticed have a good number of players who should be lower. Making a pure rating based matchmaking seems like a quick and fair fix.

2.) This is definitely going to be an unpopular opinion, but i actually strongly believe that rift should always have been according to rating and nothing else. We just needed to wait for some time for the rankings to reach an equilibrium where a higher collection strength equals a high rift rating. Think of it this way. Lower rank players complained about getting stomped by people with the same rating who are way stronger. If we just let this play out for a month or so, I highly doubt these people who are stomping the lower level players would be matching them again for long, because they would have climbed ranks so fast. This is the whole point of an ELO (or in this case rift rating) ladder ranking system. Sure it will start off with imbalance, but over time as long as we stick to that single metric, everyone will eventually be having fair matches.

I really feel like throwing in a second metric (collection strength) that is totally unrelated to the first one (rift rating) just replaced one problem that could have ironed itself out over time with another that actually gets worse over time. Consider this.. if i quit for a month or so and come back, I’ll most likely still be rifting with the same guys as i was before i quit, only this time i’ll be in gold instead of d1. I’ll probably never see diamond again. That’s not how ladder is supposed to work. I’m sure others are experiencing this right now, and this really needs to be addressed.

 

[Yujipooji]

I can add one player’s data to this. I started tracking matches since the first matchmaking update.
Methods (you can skip this part):
Here, I’ll split the data into three categories: matches against D2 and below, matches against D1, and matches against top three. Rankings are based on the displayed rank at match start. This means where my opponent finished at end of the previous season. Exception: top three also includes known former top three regardless of rank displayed. These are specifically: Princess Celestia, OddLegend, HeGunz, Kulczewski, Yujipooji, diasuke when I recognize the name. Other names in non-Roman alphabet were not tracked in this category.

Format is wins-losses

Previous patch:
Top 3: 3-21
D1: 3-6
D2 and below: 35-3
Results: 5 weeks D2, 2 weeks D3

Current patch:
Top 3: 3-3
D1: 9-4
D2 and below: 39-2
Results: 8 weeks D1

Some observations: previous patch, I met top three players about 1/3 or all matches. Current patch it’s about 1/10.
Win rate against D1 and top three has gone up on the new patch, though sample size for top three is small.

Opinions:
Based on strength of collection and what I know about the top 3 players, I certainly deserve to match with them under either patch despite my terrible record against them in the previous patch.
My poor record against top 3 is the reason I consider myself to have weak mechanics but strong collection.
Strong record against D2 and below suggests I should probably be no lower than D2.
I consider the 2 weeks at D3 to be evidence that strength based matchmaking makes the ladder system unbalanced.

I remember rifting you last patch. You were in gold iirc and I was so salty that time because i was only gonna get 8 points for winning when I know for a fact that during that week, you were strong enough to contend for as high as phenom.

 

[Liam]

2.) This is definitely going to be an unpopular opinion, but i actually strongly believe that rift should always have been according to rating and nothing else. We just needed to wait for some time for the rankings to reach an equilibrium where a higher collection strength equals a high rift rating. Think of it this way. Lower rank players complained about getting stomped by people with the same rating who are way stronger. If we just let this play out for a month or so, I highly doubt these people who are stomping the lower level players would be matching them again for long, because they would have climbed ranks so fast. This is the whole point of an ELO (or in this case rift rating) ladder ranking system. Sure it will start off with imbalance, but over time as long as we stick to that single metric, everyone will eventually be having fair matches.

We did feel the same way when Rift Battles was first implemented, but the most recent changes with collection matchmaking were implemented largely based on community feedback.

We posted a lot of messages and replies asking players to wait for Rift Rating values to settle so they could start finding more fair matches, but the amount of players disengaging with the game mode because they expected to find a perfectly fair fight when pressing "FIND OPPONENT" was pretty staggering. In the end, I don't think that Rift Rating values settled fast enough below Gold.

Also, any new player that gets particularly lucky with Relic openings and builds a strong collection early game, but also only begins to start playing with Rift Battles relatively late game (ex: Gold 4 collection, starting off at Rift Rating 1000) disrupts the ladder and causes a lot of lopsided matches. Those were reported to us as critical issues with a lot of anger!

...

All that said, I do think that loosening up on collection matchmaking at the top of the ladder (even more) could be healthy, and (no promises) we'll be thinking about that for 3.4.

If we were to make that change, players at D4 would still be able to match with players in D1 at the moment because the Rift Rating matchmaking threshold is pretty large. Some matches take place 200 RR apart in special circumstances. I see recent comments about letting any Diamond fight any Diamond, but I also don't think D4 players would be thrilled about matching with a LEGEND rank player when their collections aren't at least somewhat comparable. (unless...?)

 

[Dusty00]

@Yujipooji I’m with you from the beginning that rift match making should be purely based on points and no other metrics. As @Liam mentioned, it was unfortunate that proper rating couldn’t settle fast enough for players to stay engaged in the game mode.

One idea that I think has been brought up already but I can’t remember who to give credit to, is to implement a gate that prevents players from dropping below a certain rank threshold from decay. For example, a player who has reached the G4 will only be able to decay down to G4. If you’ve ever made it to Diamond, then you will never drop below G1. Alternatively, collection strength could be used to check for that threshold. A player with 300k FS (top20 characters only) will never be able to drop below G4 with Decay. In short, preventing players from decaying below a certain threshold may help the ladders settle better.

A more complex and difficult approach is to look at the current 5min matchmaking design. We don’t have enough players constantly queuing up to allow for matchmaking to be as fair as possible. I have more details written up in another post that I can grab and edit when not on my phone.

All in all, it’s very nice to know that HV is actively listening and making adjustments on this issue. Perhaps doing something about player perception (Reward distribution and structuring, payoff for time invested when losing a match) might do more good than getting to the bottom of perfecting the actual matchmaking algorithm.

 

[ZeoW]

Gonna bounce another idea here by setting up a rift rating difference threshold when matchmaking.

Pretend I'm a Silver 4 player with a Diamond-worthy collection and team. I should be matched with people with rift rating difference of.. say 200 points only (I don't know how much of a jump 200 points will take me but assume 200 points difference will only pair me up with Silver 3, 2 and 1).

What's likely to happen is I can't find an opponent within the tier that has a similar collection strength. Maybe implement a system where if this happens 3-5x, I automatically get some free rating points since it shows that I'm not supposed to be in that tier.

The problem lies when there are people in the same boat; high collection strength but low tier. I reckon there's data on the average collection strength of say the Silver tier so perhaps how much one deviates from that average could be taken into account when giving out point?

All this is assuming we're still going to use the collection strength metric as the primary means of matchmaking (as it is now).

 

[TraiP]

I also partially agree with @Yujipooji 's, that rift should only take consideration the rift score and nothing else for most ranks.I ll try to give an example on why it is better.

Let's say that the players of rift are in a huge array and your target/goal is to sort that array, the previous matchmaking was swapping or maintaining places between adjacent rift scores based on the result of the rift, essentially bubblesorting the initial array.
With the current matchmaking you're trying to do the same but you have a closed range enforced by the collection strength , which means you're creating subarrays waiting to be sorted by a similar bubblesort mechanic,I think it fairly obvious the sorting will be more chaotic and unstable than the first one ,since there is no guarantee that you have all the players belong to the subarray they should rightfully be in based on both collection strength and rift score.

So, 1)high lvl players who didn't play rift for a while will have harder time finding matches than other
2) players with outliers in their collections will probably get unbalanced matches either in their favor or not ,this is based on my assumption that you're using an arithmetic mean to do the comparison (which doesn't work as a metric unless your data is normally distributed)
3) the time you oscillate in a rank is increased with the current matchmaking based on the thought process I said above
(more chaoric and unstable way of sorting )
My suggestions in general :

• collection strength metrics up to silver 2
• rift score only from silver 1 and up
• decremental decay (meaning after 5 days it will be less decay than the previous)

My suggestions for the current matchmaking :

• weighted means as metric when outliers exist in a players collection
• tighter limits in the collection strength (to mimic an array and not create a subarray)
• increase the number of characters the metric is calculated with

that's about it ,I might be a bit out of topic from the original thread.
PS : yeah it's a static example and the matchmaking is dynamic but i think it makes sense .

 

[Luke]

Those were reported to us as critical issues with a lot of anger!

1) I can’t believe angry worded emails work! I thought they were myth!

2) I see a few posts suggesting going back and what are we? the alpha testing group? (Alpha testing is the testing that happens before beta)

Then epiphany!

This game mode is really new. New enough to have just this game mode to be in the alpha stage...so who knows, maybe we can go back in time. All we lack are some angry worded emails.

 

[Yujipooji]

We did feel the same way when Rift Battles was first implemented, but the most recent changes with collection matchmaking were implemented largely based on community feedback.

We posted a lot of messages and replies asking players to wait for Rift Rating values to settle so they could start finding more fair matches, but the amount of players disengaging with the game mode because they expected to find a perfectly fair fight when pressing "FIND OPPONENT" was pretty staggering. In the end, I don't think that Rift Rating values settled fast enough below Gold.

Also, any new player that gets particularly lucky with Relic openings and builds a strong collection early game, but also only begins to start playing with Rift Battles relatively late game (ex: Gold 4 collection, starting off at Rift Rating 1000) disrupts the ladder and causes a lot of lopsided matches. Those were reported to us as critical issues with a lot of anger!

...

All that said, I do think that loosening up on collection matchmaking at the top of the ladder (even more) could be healthy, and (no promises) we'll be thinking about that for 3.4.

If we were to make that change, players at D4 would still be able to match with players in D1 at the moment because the Rift Rating matchmaking threshold is pretty large. Some matches take place 200 RR apart in special circumstances. I see recent comments about letting any Diamond fight any Diamond, but I also don't think D4 players would be thrilled about matching with a LEGEND rank player when their collections aren't at least somewhat comparable. (unless...?)

Diamonds rifting with diamonds is fine to me, because:

1.) You’re in diamond. Welcome to the top 200. You’re getting at least one diamond key every week. Earn your freaking spot like everyone else.

2.) D4’s matching with legends won’t happen often as long as the collection strength metric is removed because it will be based on luck and timing. This is further balanced out by the plus/minus point ratios in case a “mismatch” occurs. If matchmaking will prioritize those with closer ratings, this should happen less.

3.) Yes d4’s can run into top players, but to me the important thing is, everyone has an EQUAL shot at running into them. Right now players with weaker rosters are being rewarded by being protected from them. In high rank at least, this doesn’t seem right.

 

[Dusty00]

@Yujipooji,

Appreciate the feedback! Happy to hear that things are beginning to sort themselves out at the top ranks, but there are still more changes we'd like to make to Rift Battles even still.


It doesn't work exactly like you described, but matchmaking by collection strength does begin to fall apart (get ignored) at the top ranks as described here. At the moment, the threshold for when that starts could possibly stand to be tuned if Diamond tier players are looking for this kind of behavior. We'll be considering tweaking this mechanic in the future.

Do you personally prefer a close Rift Rating with your opponent (1980 vs 1990), over a fair match with even collections?


This is how it was when Rift Battles first rolled out. The majority of players contacting us and giving us feedback (especially in Silver or lower) didn't agree with that.

Even after matchmaking by collection strength to help weed out the very unfair matches, we still receive a lot of feedback to fix and restrict the matchmaking even further if there's even a small discrepancy in collection strength. It's a tricky balance, but we're currently exploring solutions to try and make both types of players as happy as possible.

Resurrecting this post in light of new shower-time ideas...

There's been an ongoing struggle for folks transitioning from Gold to Diamond ranks. To keep things simple and short, there are 2 underlying problems

1. The power level gap between Gold tier and Diamond tier characters are too great
2. It takes too long to raise a competitive Diamond character; I don't need to get in to the details but from experience, it takes 25 weeks to collect 5 fodders and 30 weeks to collect 3 elemental essences to evolve ONE character. Not to mention another 20 weeks or so to level up to lv55 or so.

There are many players stuck in the transition where they may have 1 or 2 diamond characters, and are forced to compete against someone else with a full map of diamond characters.

Yes, in those cases the player who is NOT ready should not be able to advance. But that stops progression in a very undesirable way - you lose most of your matches and rift just becomes NOT fun at that point.

So, @Liam a couple suggestions for you and the team to chew on if haven't already:

Diamond tier players should have their own league. Like Prize Fights where you can choose between Bronze, Silver, and Gold; Rift can have a separate league for players who are actually ready to compete there.

Players participating in Gold tier league will have their Diamond characters converted to lv50 Gold characters in both defense and offense, regardless of their stats in Diamond.

The highest reward in Gold tier league should be 1 Diamond key at the end of the season. This allows Gold tier level players to slowly build up their Natural Diamond characters.

The key here, is to develop a way for the game to convert characters from Diamond tier to Gold tier in order to participate in Rift. This is the only way to allow players to continue raising their diamond collection in prize fights while still able to participate in rifts.

I'm sure there are a lot of other implications and aspects to think about, but hope this one idea helps.