Balancing scenarios for 50% winrate even with pug vs premade.

[Asderas27]

I would like to understand the thought process behind such posts.
Have people never played any other mmo with any semblance of pvp ?

[Maltar]

First off, thank you for the constructive criticism Dabbart, this is the first post here that really gets into the meat and bones of my suggestion and picks it apart at the seams.
Is very helpful and maybe with some work a better suggestion can be filtered down from my original proposal.

You have written quite a lot for me to respond to, so I will try to break it down in general steps rather than a point for point response, as I have a tendency to get quite verbose.

First off, yeah, a normal MMR system is impossible with our current player base, I quite agree, especially towards the upper end of premades often there will be only one maybe two premades constantly queuing.
That was where my idea of filling out with numbers originated, as there just is no organized opposition.

The only other way I could think of would be even worse, which would be stat % buffing for each loss, but that runs into the same abusable system of take a sc loss as a premade for overwhelming kills, as this suggestion also suffers under to a certain degree.

Now your suggestion of form 5 man and bring in weak player has less impact than maybe expected. If we go from the original post of 90 points on a 6 man, replacing that with a average 10 point char, or even a 5 point char would only reduce it to 75, a loss of 1-2 players on the opposing team, and by two wins in a row that would be gone as the general group score would be back at 87 total. Which yes, you could push the score a few times in a row by rotating out a player, but you will quickly stabilize at a high average score doing this.

For a three-man you would have 45 points, for a loss of on average 4.5 players vs your three. But with lesser players joining you would at the low end sit at 60 points, and could easily end up higher. And with two wins your threeman will be at 51 points already. It is tricky to game the system without taking losses.

The WC's are a carrot for all the people that don't have BiS, which is still a decent amount of players, especially players that are not well known premade players, or long time players, the people that truly need these sort of systems. Many of the people that get farmed on repeat are playing to gear, and if the premade players are playing for kills, but the rewards are now going to the players being farmed when they win the sc anyway, well mission accomplished. The farmed get rewards if the premade don't push to win, but just farms them for kills.
Basically counter pug frustration with increased rewards for winning even if dying a lot.

And yeah, if you are BiS, you care about the kills, but where is there a real fight be found these days? Often you are lucky if you get one or two real fights against another premade in a evening, so if you can't get a real challenge, a artificial one like what I suggest here might be the only bet to really push yourself in a sc once in a while.

Well 50% is mostly to make the math easy to convey, and to make it easily understandable for every player. I win it gets one step harder, I lose it gets one step easier.
Now the thing to remember is that over time numbers should preferably move towards a average. A hard fought win where you really get to show off your skills is a much more satisfying game than one where you are crushing pug filled sc after pug filled sc until you fall asleep. Now where the numbers both could and probably should be tweaked is towards the extremes of these ranges, but that needs real playtesting to find the sweetspots.

Once you pass certain numbers there should preferably be a softcap so you don't end up with stupid fights, like the 18 vs 6 I mentioned earlier.
Might need to put a multiplier on players once you pass a certain amount of players against you.

The idea is for the best players to consistently be challenged, either in numbers, or by being paired against similar enemies if available, while mellowing the difficulty for less prepared players and making it a softer transition from low rr/gear. At the games current state I would struggle to bring any new player into the game long term once they hit t4 in it's current form, though the QoL changes done with introducing WC and wards has softened the issue somewhat.

How to handle healers and tanks is as always a issue, you might have to give a discount if light on either of these, and as a general suggestion a counter to show the amount tanks/healers/dps in que for say last 5 minutes, to give a good idea of what would give you fastest pop to log. And well there is always the possibility to give loot incentives to players to log the needed archtypes, though of course, this is another mechanic that only serves non BiS players. But then BiS players don't need carrots anymore.

[Dabbart]

Thank you for the reasoned OP, and response!

I took snippets to guide my response, I tried to touch on all your points though, not just what I quoted.

Spoiler:

Now your suggestion of form 5 man and bring in weak player has less impact than maybe expected. If we go from the original post of 90 points on a 6 man, replacing that with a average 10 point char, or even a 5 point char would only reduce it to 75, a loss of 1-2 players on the opposing team, and by two wins in a row that would be gone as the general group score would be back at 87 total. Which yes, you could push the score a few times in a row by rotating out a player, but you will quickly stabilize at a high average score doing this.

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Once you pass certain numbers there should preferably be a softcap so you don't end up with stupid fights, like the 18 vs 6 I mentioned earlier.

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You see the problem yourself though, you just don't run it out. The numbers work for a while, until you have players gaming for months. Take a look at this post Number 8 is 145/16. WIth your System™, how would they ever get a fair SC? Now, you would say "They never get that far! That's the beauty of the System™!" But there are times where a 6man could get a monstrous string of EZ wins, simply due to the enemy not having the archetypes. As long as there is a cap, yea some 6man's will just Farm Them All depending on the SC in question.

Spoiler:

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Well 50% is mostly to make the math easy to convey, and to make it easily understandable for every player.

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A, You said it was the Golden Standard ,

B, This is the heart of the issue. What victory rate is Acceptable? Why shouldn't it be 90.06% like our friend Weiki at number 8 on that list? Should that player be forced to fight "unfair" battles every single time they log simply because they Win more? If so, at what rate? This could functionally break SCs, you do know that? If a 6man gets a string of enemies with 0 healers, it wont matter how many of them there are, until you hit the cap. That 6man will farm them. Then, later in the night, x2 6mans with low points Q in, and the original team is destined to get dominated for, how long until they are "allowed" to have a fair match again? Do you think that 6man is going to continue playing knowing this? What about Solo Qing afterwards? If anything, this will promote Smurfing and playing many alts so you don't get "caught by the System™.

C, I appreciate you're coming at this with the intention of promoting Harder gameplay, but that's not what MOST 6mans/players want. If they did, we'd have a vibrant 6v6/ranked scene. All the tools are there. I do see the occasional team or groups going at it. But generally, *crickets*. Most teams/people just want to farm pugs, or have a decent even match.

D, At the end of the day your answer is to promote Zerging. "Can't beat this team in a 6v6 or a 12v12, so let's try 9v12 or 6v12." It doesn't do anything that you can't experience vividly in ORvR. No one enjoys being run over.

Btw, I'm not a total hater. This was my idea to promote "harder" style gameplay. Keep the idea's coming.

Spoiler:

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The idea is for the best players to consistently be challenged, either in numbers, or by being paired against similar enemies if available, while mellowing the difficulty for less prepared players and making it a softer transition from low rr/gear.

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You basically described MMR there. We don't have the playerbase for a real MMR system, so instead lets just have MMR that is more complicated, at least as easy to manipulate(if not easier since we all have Alts, and tying this to your account means no more playing your lowbie), and results in zerging? That's a hard No from me on this.

And, in regards to facing/seeking challenges, If the 6man wants to "challenge" themselves, then go roam. There's plenty of lopsided fights to find out there. If you want it to be organized, we have Discord and the forums. We have a 6v6 group que, a challenge system, etc. Having a system where you fight slightly larger waves of enemies is great in some PvE games. But in PvP games, numbers matter.

Also, Objectives. Scenarios have objectives. Being outnumbered is just a guaranteed loss in many multi flag SCs. The people mostly being impact by this would be happy though. Those getting farmed get a PvE Win, and those doing the farming get the loss they need to ensure they have a fair number of enemies, while still farming the PUGs. The System™, will functionally then work exactly as the worst SCs do today. With PUGs getting farmed and desperately trying to win via backdoor PvE.

Edit: God, could you imagine the Salt over some poor PUG who caps the flag? "No! Don't cap it! We need to keep our System™ points low! Just kill!, no Objs you n00b!" Because I totally can.

TLDR: I think the premise, promoting more difficult fights for the more successful players/groups, would be largely beneficial. But the implementation would break the game, Imo. This is just a long way to put in a MMR system, without it being an MMR system.

[inoeth]

I have an idea which is coming from guild wars 2, there they also have instanced scenarios.
but gear does not play a role there because player level and equipment get equalized.
you can chose a set of stats (str focused, int focused, ...) and a set of weaponprocs.

I know this does not fit 100% in RoR because class mechanics are very different in GW2, but might be a step in a direction where equipment is noch such a big deal, especially for newer players who might want to leave after getting stomped by sov people.

my two cents

[nocturnalguest]

sov or not, equipment is off the issue beside solo/pugging. proper team gonna farm you even in vanq+, gap is actually none existant
idea in itself is kinda interesting, however i'd agree with Dabbart - execution is pretty much unclear, lots of cons in the scheme

[Maltar]

Spoiler:

You see the problem yourself though, you just don't run it out. The numbers work for a while, until you have players gaming for months. Take a look at this post Number 8 is 145/16. WIth your System™, how would they ever get a fair SC? Now, you would say "They never get that far! That's the beauty of the System™!" But there are times where a 6man could get a monstrous string of EZ wins, simply due to the enemy not having the archetypes. As long as there is a cap, yea some 6man's will just Farm Them All depending on the SC in question.

Yeah, there is of course ways you could attempt to balance out if there is a severe lack of a archtype by making a lack of a archtype influence the value a player can bring.

Spoiler:

A, You said it was the Golden Standard ,

B, This is the heart of the issue. What victory rate is Acceptable? Why shouldn't it be 90.06% like our friend Weiki at number 8 on that list? Should that player be forced to fight "unfair" battles every single time they log simply because they Win more? If so, at whakjt rate? This could functionally break SCs, you do know that? If a 6man gets a string of enemies with 0 healers, it wont matter how many of them there are, until you hit the cap. That 6man will farm them. Then, later in the night, x2 6mans with low points Q in, and the original team is destined to get dominated for, how long until they are "allowed" to have a fair match again? Do you think that 6man is going to continue playing knowing this? What about Solo Qing afterwards? If anything, this will promote Smurfing and playing many alts so you don't get "caught by the System™.

C, I appreciate you're coming at this with the intention of promoting Harder gameplay, but that's not what MOST 6mans/players want. If they did, we'd have a vibrant 6v6/ranked scene. All the tools are there. I do see the occasional team or groups going at it. But generally, *crickets*. Most teams/people just want to farm pugs, or have a decent even match.

D, At the end of the day your answer is to promote Zerging. "Can't beat this team in a 6v6 or a 12v12, so let's try 9v12 or 6v12." It doesn't do anything that you can't experience vividly in ORvR. No one enjoys being run over.

Btw, I'm not a total hater. This was my idea to promote "harder" style gameplay. Keep the idea's coming.

A. Yeah, on average pushing 50% with the intention of every fight being a 50/50 chance of a win or loss for every player on the server, no matter who you are. Premades will not enjoy this, but it could push premades into rather running ranked for balanced fights, rather than constant pug farming, but without locking 6 mans out of a large amount of sc's which seems to be the current push in the community in separating the premades from the pugs.

B. Well lets turn this on it's head, I don't have the number for top losers in sc's, but there will surely be people in the opposite situation for large parts of the game, people with a 10-20% winrate, people that are trying as hard as they can but by bad luck keep meeting the same level of premades almost every sc day after day because of limited timeframe for when they play. And with limited population, no standard MMR system could be implemented to help them. That increases the risk of losing these players who for various reasons can't pour endless amounts of time into the game. And every player lost pushes this situation further into unsustainable over time.

Premade or beginner should still be having highs and lows quite consistently. Though if going away from the 50% aim, the closer to a normal MMR calculation becomes viable, go for % reduction of score on a loss, but keep the growth numerical on a win, while uncapping the upper bounds so you can fight until you can't hold anymore. Every score starting at 10, if loss -1 score, if loss above 10 -10% of score. Increase of 1 on a win.

I would say that a 90% winrate is too high and detrimental for the games overall health over time. Even the 100th spot at 78% is very high at 8 out of 10 sc being a win. And means that you are not facing appropriate challenges.
Now I have put together a quick off the cuffs calculation of the points based on 1 point per win -10% per loss

Maths time, not my strong suit but just quickly showing numbers for a few of the % points over time.
90% winrate = 90 points per player = 540 points for premade group
80% winrate = 40 points per player = 240 points for premade group
70% winrate = 24 points per player = 120 points for premade group
60% winrate = 15 points per player = 90 points for premade group
50% winrate = 10 points per player = 60 points for premade group
40% winrate = 6 points per player = 36 points for premade group

Now over time, unless you are willing to take quite significant losses in a row it will be hard to game the winrate, and those at lower % points will be rewarded for their wins if the premade is farming kills rather than pushing for wins and thereby trying for more appropriate opposition. And there is still the possibility of putting in counters if killing gets excessive while still aiming to lose the sc.

But looking at the scores we can do a few quick adjustments to the original idea, lock each player to 10 point value as minimum, that means a player in a a 6 man with a 60% winrate on average would face 9 players if they only have a 50% winrate, and any player with more than that will quickly eat up the difference. More likely you would be facing 8 players as some will likely have a win or two from before.
With these numbers a win rate of 60%+ is highly likely for any premade not facing another premade, while premade vs premade will be within the 60-70% bracket be fairly closely matched.
You can dominate 6-7 out of 10 sc's as a strong premade but going higher will quickly be a uphill battle. Premades still doing 60-70 wins per 100 but at least there is respite for other players, and not just when the premade meets another premade.

Using % reduction is beneficial to premades and not to general players as it has stronger effect on reducing score the higher your score is, but if one wants to avoid punishing any premades overmuch is probably a better bet. If they want to burn their time doing solo que and taking loss after loss well they are feeding their opponents and therefore being part of the solution countering premade farming.

Scores are permanent only losing reduces and winning increases, so unless they have endless amount of characters available they will slowly but steadily climb their score upward on every character until they have to start taking losses.


There are very few ranked 6/6 players left in the game, most of the groups have long left the game for various reasons, warband play having become even more zergy, ranked not having a big enough population to really take off + toxic reactions to anyone not fully geared or playing suboptimal classes. If they want a fight, they mostly can't find one that is appropriate, head to rvr as a 6 man and you will get surprise warband rather than find a 6-12 man to fight, que sc and you will farm 90% of the evening and maybe get 1-2 good even fights if you are lucky.

A good premade can pick to pieces larger numbers, only when facing another premade do you care about being outnumbered. So yes, facing a slightly larger zerg for a premade makes for a interesting fight.

Taking a 6 vs 9 for a good premade is not that hard of a fight vs non premades. 6vs12 can be way more tricky after the GCD changes though.

Separating out sc's that are more combat based rather than objective based would also be appropriate here. Divide sc's into three categories, pug, even numbers, slaughter.
Pug is as always, anyone can join, numbers not looked at, pure chaos.
Even numbers implements a limited balance feature, numbers count somewhat, you should be meeting something equal within 10%+- to your % winscore, the game modes that deal with flag captures, hold objective area would go under this category, unbalanced numbers would make these difficult.
Slaughter is just that, kills as objective maps, might need to redesign or add a few sc's that focus on kill mechanics, morkaine temple, orb carrying etc. Points are in full effect, and you can face uneven numbers.

That leaves you with 3 options and if population is low slaughter is more likely to pop, Even numbers more likely if you have equal level enemies to fight, pug vs pug, premade vs premade.

I had a few other ideas that could be implemented to incentivize making premades and accepting tougher challenges in sc's, but run into the constant issue that any higher premade is fully geared so no carrot to wave towards them, and you would risk even further unbalancing things if they get more toys than the general population.

[Cyrylius]

System seems insanely fun for premade players. I myself made a premade only once, when due to bug scenarios were opening with no destro inside and we were getting fights 15v6 against more or less pure order pugs. And the only reason we stopped was SCs were closing due to pop imbalance even if we were winning.
But, if the system is really fun for organised premade it's probably not very fun for solo players. I mean, you get to be a mob character against marvel hero 6 man team, basically. If pug players don't care about that then i really do like the system. And to make it more abuseproof, maybe make it so that two points are given for each SC? One for winning and another for winning on kills? Even if i suspect this will prevent pugs for chasing objectives with score of about 40:0

[Maltar]

Yeah, definitely a good point there Cyrylius, splitting up the points for win and kills is a definitive option if not splitting the sc's into the three type idea. And maybe splitting up the reward system as well, though definitely want to have more of the crest rewards on winning than on pure killing.

Well how much fun you have when you enter a sc with a bunch of other pugs and you look at the marvel 6 hero man team in full sov on opposing team, and you maybe have 1 tank, 3 dps, 1 dps healer, and one healer. You know it's a loss before the sc even begins, unless you can manage to ninja pve the objectives while they slaughter you. You have to wait 5 minutes to surrender while often being spawncamped. Now repeat this 4-5 times in a row and you have just spent 30+minutes with no hope to win and no way to dodge them other than queing one specific sc that often won't pop.

I would definitely rather take a massive fight against the hero team, if I am not a premade, just managing to take down a premade even if we are massively numerically superior is a epic fight anyway. The story we faced one of the strongest premades in a massive fight, it was a close battle and many of us died, but in the end we eeked out a victory by 10 points, getting a massive amount of medals as reward for managing to win even if we died in droves. We kept pushing them and chasing them around the zone, but we won!

And as a premade player facing overwhelming numbers, slowly and methodically picking the enemy apart, tight CC usage, kiting, picking targets carefully, positioning, getting to really push the envelope to get the kills. Yeah might have lost the sc to them, but man what a rush getting there. The whole team glowing from a hard fought battle, perfect executions on the punts, healers being on point and getting off that life saving heal at the last second when some unexpected focus fire suddenly hit. And that perfectly timed tank m4 that gave us the breathing room to stabilize.

Both groups fighting in the same sc, both feeling they won, both having a blast of a time.

Unbalanced numbers can be epic fun as long as the overall strength of the players is balanced.

[Cyrylius]

(...)

Yeah, that might have been a stupid concern in hindsight. As i mentioned, i like the idea a lot. Not likely to get implemented but sounds fun.

Also, the system does help with composition issues, deficit classes will have on average higher score therefore being more costly.

[Archimediss]

Actually why make it all so complicated it can be done simply by boosting all to same lvl that way skills will prevail and the good players will win , if it can be done in zone for the below 40 why not in sc for those not yet 80