GAC matchmaking system

Replies

  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    Any of those suggestions would make GAC worse, not better.

    1. Building your roster is part of the strategy. GP is a good measure because it's a metric of resources invested, it's perfectly fine to not be tailored for individual toons. If somebody decided to r7 Tuskens while someone else gave those 3 r7 mats to an actual meta team, the second player rightfully deserves an advantage.

    You obviously didn't read my post - I mentioned one aspect of game - GAC - focusing more on the battles and toon choices for each battle. Every other part of the game can focus on roster strategy. The more a game can use variety, the better it is, by definition.

    3. Secondary stats like mods should not be included, everyone is responsible for building their own roster and farm a mod depth proportional to their GP. If someone at 7-8m is still sitting on 20-30 mods above 20 speed, they shouldn't wait for matchmaking to fix their problems.

    I agree with this, I just don't know if mods are used in the current calculation. I was asking as a question.

    (3.) If you can't clear a zone, there is no reason to open up the zone behind it. Blocking a portion of the board is a viable strategy, if you can't clear a front wall, you shouldn't even have a remote chance to win.

    It's viable because you say its viable? This an opinion. You state it like it's a fact.

    GAC is a competitive game mode by its nature. It shouldn't be adjusted to be more in favor of the casual PvP players instead of those who actually put in that little extra effort to build their roster for it.

    Again you assume that this was my angle, when it wasn't. All my suggestions are based on game design to engage the most players and to focus rewards based on a variety of decision-making scenarios. If the entire game is based on roster design, that is more limited than one that is based on roster design AND other factors.

    Success in GAC is exactly based on both roster composition and tactical aspects. Even with a roster-wise advantage you still need to apply good tactics to win. As you progress through the championship the effect of leagues slowly kicks in and you get matched with opponents that perform more and more on the same level as you (more even matches). Tactics play a bigger role in the latter GAs/rounds of the championship.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    The above example will still hold true in lower divisions. So the only claim you can make from this point is that the person who does 2 g7s is doing it wrong, instead of seeing the fact that cg can easily heal this by simply redoing the tables more even and consistent with the investment-resource angle.
  • MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.
    So why does it matter in this interpretation if it never gets applied in any practical way?

    Compare an r7 NS team with no DR to someone with g12 or non-existent NS and relic DR and you'll see who made a better choice when upgrading 5 characters. It's pointless to compare the GP of g7 characters even in the lowest division.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.
    So why does it matter in this interpretation if it never gets applied in any practical way?

    Compare an r7 NS team with no DR to someone with g12 or non-existent NS and relic DR and you'll see who made a better choice when upgrading 5 characters. It's pointless to compare the GP of g7 characters even in the lowest division.

    I can't be bothered to do new calculations, the interpretation still holds with folks with low gp. For us at the higher quadrants it still works as in the investment=gp angle doesn't work because the gp gains doesn't correlate with gp gain in the tables.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.
    So why does it matter in this interpretation if it never gets applied in any practical way?

    Compare an r7 NS team with no DR to someone with g12 or non-existent NS and relic DR and you'll see who made a better choice when upgrading 5 characters. It's pointless to compare the GP of g7 characters even in the lowest division.

    In order to do this calculation properly you need to take crystal cost of other cost of upgrades and see how they don't correlate with gp gain as a multiplier. It's both skewed upwards and downwards in different properties we can upgrade.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?
  • furyousgeorge74
    23 posts Member
    edited June 2021
    Kyno wrote: »

    This is a META driven game, and that also produces sameness across rosters.

    More balance and less "drive" driven development, means more people can compete without good planning and focus on a development strategy. That would seem to lead down the road of sameness, as the quickest and easiest to get that is "on par" would be the immediate goals. This doesnt reward players who have planned and worked out the plan over a period of time. That seems like a bad way to change the game.


    Again, that is a black and white view. I am advocating for just GAC to have more balance - not every aspect of the game. Also, balance does not take away drive to develop rosters, it simply splits that drive to a greater variety of characters and allows more choice. You cannot win without well developed characters, but at least you could have more choice about which characters you develop and how you develop them. If the game structure dictates what a good roster is, then we are all just following a formulaic pattern toward the same goal. Thankfully, the game is not completely formulaic and you can diverge a bit from the mainstream. I am advocating for adjusting a little more in that direction just for GAC, not every aspect of the game.

    GAC is like a sports tournament. When you get evenly matched teams, you have more exciting games. Blowouts are not fun for either team - at least for most. I know there are some that take Machiavellian enjoyment from one-sided wins.

    I realize the meta drive, also drives revenue and that is the primary goal of most businesses. But, FTP games with in-game monetization like SWGOH, work because they drive a user-base off a low barrier to entry. Then, a portion of those users will spend. The larger the user base, the larger number of users that will spend. So, catering to the entire user base also drives overall revenue.

    It can be hard to accept change when you are sitting at the top having followed all the guides and worked in lock-step with your guild to have specific teams with specific mods for specific events. Maybe that model is the best revenue-producing model, I don't really know for sure. I was simply making a suggestion that ultimately nobody knows for sure if it would work or not. I find it interesting that these forums often drive so much defensiveness whenever any critique or suggestion for change is presented. Maybe that is the mindset that provides the greatest profit for the corporations that build these games. I honestly would love to have that conversation with the data scientists who look that game behavior-revenue relationships.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    edited June 2021
    Kyno wrote: »

    This is a META driven game, and that also produces sameness across rosters.

    More balance and less "drive" driven development, means more people can compete without good planning and focus on a development strategy. That would seem to lead down the road of sameness, as the quickest and easiest to get that is "on par" would be the immediate goals. This doesnt reward players who have planned and worked out the plan over a period of time. That seems like a bad way to change the game.


    Again, that is a black and white view. I am advocating for just GAC to have more balance - not every aspect of the game. Also, balance does not take away drive to develop rosters, it simply splits that drive to a greater variety of characters and allows more choice. You cannot win without well developed characters, but at least you could have more choice about which characters you develop and how you develop them. If the game structure dictates what a good roster is, then we are all just following a formulaic pattern toward the same goal. Thankfully, the game is not completely formulaic and you can diverge a bit from the mainstream. I am advocating for adjusting a little more in that direction just for GAC, not every aspect of the game.

    GAC is like a sports tournament. When you get evenly matched teams, you have more exciting games. Blowouts are not fun for either team - at least for most. I know there are some that take Machiavellian enjoyment from one-sided wins.

    I realize the meta drive, also drives revenue and that is the primary goal of most businesses. But, FTP games with in-game monetization like SWGOH, work because they drive a user-base off a low barrier to entry. Then, a portion of those users will spend. The larger the user base, the larger number of users that will spend. So, catering to the entire user base also drives overall revenue.

    It can be hard to accept change when you are sitting at the top having followed all the guides and worked in lock-step with your guild to have specific teams with specific mods for specific events. Maybe that model is the best revenue-producing model, I don't really know for sure. I was simply making a suggestion that ultimately nobody knows for sure if it would work or not. I find it interesting that these forums often drive so much defensiveness whenever any critique or suggestion for change is presented. Maybe that is the mindset that provides the greatest profit for the corporations that build these games. I honestly would love to have that conversation with the data scientists who look that game behavior-revenue relationships.

    GAC does that already. Many players are making different choices than others have and becoming top scorers in GAC.

    There is no formula to a good roster, there is a just a point system that measures how many piece of gear and upgrades you have made. How a player wants to place those is up to them. If they can effectively use an "off team" and they invest into it, there is no down side, inside the world of GAC.


    Edit to add, the reason players make the same choices tends to be because GAC is not in a vacuum and the best choices of what to use in GAC extends to their usefulness outside of GAC. No amount of changes within GAC can change that.
  • Waqui wrote: »

    Success in GAC is exactly based on both roster composition and tactical aspects. Even with a roster-wise advantage you still need to apply good tactics to win. As you progress through the championship the effect of leagues slowly kicks in and you get matched with opponents that perform more and more on the same level as you (more even matches). Tactics play a bigger role in the latter GAs/rounds of the championship.

    Yes, I already stated that GAC is based on both, even before you get to later rounds, but yes, later rounds even more so. My point was to balance it a little more toward the tactics side since this aspect of the game is supposed to be about matchmaking. Looking at the number of users who feel outmatched and frustrated, an adjustment could increase participation rate.

    My next statement is not directed at you, just the larger forum audience - I fear that some in this forum are taking the view, "Well, it works for me and friends so don't change it." are missing the larger picture.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    Lastly this is very similar to "let's change the sandbagging causes for gac" logic. A g7 toon should weigh much less which should be determined by the value of gear and other investment that goes into it. Hint, currently it doesn't. Don't hide that under ridicilious claims of strategy. Nothing to do with it.
  • Kyno wrote: »

    GAC does that already. Many players are making different choices than others have and becoming top scorers in GAC.

    When you say, "does that already", you are viewing it like a binary issue. I am advocating for doing that to a greater degree.
    Kyno wrote: »
    There is no formula to a good roster, there is a just a point system that measures how many piece of gear and upgrades you have made. How a player wants to place those is up to them. If they can effectively use an "off team" and they invest into it, there is no down side, inside the world of GAC.

    Really? Is that why all the content creators say you need to have "these teams" and they are all the same. Also, saying "no formula" is another binary view. There is some formula, with a little flexibility. I am advocating for an adjustment not a complete switchover.
    Kyno wrote: »
    Edit to add, the reason players make the same choices tends to be because GAC is not in a vacuum and the best choices of what to use in GAC extends to their usefulness outside of GAC. No amount of changes within GAC can change that.

    Wow, "No amount of changes within GAC can change that." is the most absolutist statement yet. If you can know the future so well, you must be a billionaire from your stock investments.

    Am I in the right forum? Is this QAnon or something?

  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    I'm not sure how you can say that, any toon with the same number of abilities has the same max value of GP, no matter their usefulness. So how exactly did they do that already?
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    Lastly this is very similar to "let's change the sandbagging causes for gac" logic. A g7 toon should weigh much less which should be determined by the value of gear and other investment that goes into it. Hint, currently it doesn't. Don't hide that under ridicilious claims of strategy. Nothing to do with it.

    Much less than what?

    Strategy in terms of roster building doesnt count? Is that what you are saying here?
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    Kyno wrote: »

    GAC does that already. Many players are making different choices than others have and becoming top scorers in GAC.

    When you say, "does that already", you are viewing it like a binary issue. I am advocating for doing that to a greater degree.

    No I'm not. I am viewing it as a fluid system that allows players to make choices on various levels, bring them to a simplistic model that has no judgement on those choices and then let them use those choices to play the game mode.
    Kyno wrote: »
    There is no formula to a good roster, there is a just a point system that measures how many piece of gear and upgrades you have made. How a player wants to place those is up to them. If they can effectively use an "off team" and they invest into it, there is no down side, inside the world of GAC.

    Really? Is that why all the content creators say you need to have "these teams" and they are all the same. Also, saying "no formula" is another binary view. There is some formula, with a little flexibility. I am advocating for an adjustment not a complete switchover.

    They are advocating for effective teams to invest in. They do so based on more factors than just GAC. If GAC was played in a vaccum, and players were just given X GP of points to play the game mode and build a roster to just do that, many different styles and roster builds would come out. There is much more flexibility to the elements we have than is used because of limited resources and the pace at which they come in. Since GAC is not in a vacuum everything else comes into play when building a roster.

    A content creator advocating Ewoks at r5 or higher, isnt going to get a good reputation from a player perspective, even if murder bears are fun to play with.
    Kyno wrote: »
    Edit to add, the reason players make the same choices tends to be because GAC is not in a vacuum and the best choices of what to use in GAC extends to their usefulness outside of GAC. No amount of changes within GAC can change that.

    Wow, "No amount of changes within GAC can change that." is the most absolutist statement yet. If you can know the future so well, you must be a billionaire from your stock investments.

    Am I in the right forum? Is this QAnon or something?

    GAC is not in a vaccum. Unless that happens every game mode comes into play when a player is deciding how to build their roster and who to invest in.

    There are players that may be more GAC focused and make choices that hinder them in other areas of the game, but that is about as close as you can get to a vacuum.
  • Starslayer
    2413 posts Member

    Really? Is that why all the content creators say you need to have "these teams" and they are all the same.

    I’m no content creator, but I strongly disagree. It’s not about the right teams, it’s about having the best roster possible (for gac) with the resources at your disposal. There are a lot of possibilities.

  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    I'm not sure how you can say that, any toon with the same number of abilities has the same max value of GP, no matter their usefulness. So how exactly did they do that already?

    I easily say that because I did calculations which showcase proportionality doesn't work due to tables.
  • Starslayer
    2413 posts Member
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    Lastly this is very similar to "let's change the sandbagging causes for gac" logic. A g7 toon should weigh much less which should be determined by the value of gear and other investment that goes into it. Hint, currently it doesn't. Don't hide that under ridicilious claims of strategy. Nothing to do with it.

    My g7 Wat, armorer or at some extent Gideon would disagree. Anecdotal for sure, but it shows the complexity of a ‘fair’ gp formula. Not saying the current method is perfect (I still think relic levels add too much gp), but it’s simple and fair enough imo.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    edited June 2021
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    I'm not sure how you can say that, any toon with the same number of abilities has the same max value of GP, no matter their usefulness. So how exactly did they do that already?

    I easily say that because I did calculations which showcase proportionality doesn't work due to tables.

    How does it relate to usefulness?
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Starslayer wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    Lastly this is very similar to "let's change the sandbagging causes for gac" logic. A g7 toon should weigh much less which should be determined by the value of gear and other investment that goes into it. Hint, currently it doesn't. Don't hide that under ridicilious claims of strategy. Nothing to do with it.

    My g7 Wat, armorer or at some extent Gideon would disagree. Anecdotal for sure, but it shows the complexity of a ‘fair’ gp formula. Not saying the current method is perfect (I still think relic levels add too much gp), but it’s simple and fair enough imo.

    Hmm I don't know why this is so hard to understand. I'm saying that how the gp raises on gear tiers and many other things are not proportinal to any investmen. Ofc same things weigh the same. But that's not what I'm saying...at all.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Starslayer wrote: »
    There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
    There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
    Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

    I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
    Two possible solutions:
    1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
    2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

    Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

    EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

    I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

    I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
    I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

    Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

    About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

    Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
    And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

    To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

    The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

    But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

    Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

    I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

    Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

    I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.

    You are grasping to straws by giving irrelevant bad strategic choices. The gp table case holds universally with zero addition from further strategic choices.

    I gave one example to fill in how player choices work, in the scenario you described.

    You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

    This doesnt seem "right" to you?

    Why should player not be responsible for managing the choices they make? Why shouldn't those choices be blind to allow players strategy to shine through?

    Do you want the dev team to be assigning usefulness values to a character or gear slot?

    They already did that assign that, it's called gp tables which I have this problem with. They didn't bother at the time because it served the purpose then.

    I'm not sure how you can say that, any toon with the same number of abilities has the same max value of GP, no matter their usefulness. So how exactly did they do that already?

    I easily say that because I did calculations which showcase proportionality doesn't work due to tables.

    How does it relate to usefulness?
    I don't think matchmaking should be done on a usefulness paradigm, so it doesn't. It is currently pseudo done on investment but fails to meet that goal.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    The usefulness and such choices are the exact point of player strategy interjection.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    https://www.reddit.com/r/SWGalaxyOfHeroes/comments/6k4vzn/the_new_power_calc_formula_for_characters/

    Check the gear bit and tell me how it reflects the amount of gear investmen by any metric. I did this calculation, the disparity was huge.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    So yeah, instead of telling me an abrupt "things can be better ofc" without understanding the point is not constructive. This can be brough to dev attention which will make them perfectly understand on their own.
  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    Waqui wrote: »

    Success in GAC is exactly based on both roster composition and tactical aspects. Even with a roster-wise advantage you still need to apply good tactics to win. As you progress through the championship the effect of leagues slowly kicks in and you get matched with opponents that perform more and more on the same level as you (more even matches). Tactics play a bigger role in the latter GAs/rounds of the championship.

    Yes, I already stated that GAC is based on both, even before you get to later rounds, but yes, later rounds even more so. My point was to balance it a little more toward the tactics side since this aspect of the game is supposed to be about matchmaking. Looking at the number of users who feel outmatched and frustrated, an adjustment could increase participation rate.

    My next statement is not directed at you, just the larger forum audience - I fear that some in this forum are taking the view, "Well, it works for me and friends so don't change it." are missing the larger picture.

    I believe it works for those who take GAC into consideration when building their rosters. It works even better for those who adjusted about 20 months ago when the community discovered how matchmaking in GAC works. When reading complaints from users who feel oytmatched I sometimes get the impression that the complainer doesn't really understand how matchmaking works. At other times I get the impression that the complainers feel they deserve just as much reward as those who actually make an effort to win their rewards. I'm afraid that your suggested change could decrease the enjoyment when players play against 12 almost identical rosters every championship.

    For me personally it works about as good as the old matchmaking algorithm from before championships were introduced. My win rate remained pretty much the same after the change. However, after the change the matches became significantly more even while still giving strong, well developed rosters an advantage.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    uldebacd9el9.png

    This complainer seems to understand how mm works and is probably good with math.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    Waqui wrote: »
    Waqui wrote: »

    Success in GAC is exactly based on both roster composition and tactical aspects. Even with a roster-wise advantage you still need to apply good tactics to win. As you progress through the championship the effect of leagues slowly kicks in and you get matched with opponents that perform more and more on the same level as you (more even matches). Tactics play a bigger role in the latter GAs/rounds of the championship.

    Yes, I already stated that GAC is based on both, even before you get to later rounds, but yes, later rounds even more so. My point was to balance it a little more toward the tactics side since this aspect of the game is supposed to be about matchmaking. Looking at the number of users who feel outmatched and frustrated, an adjustment could increase participation rate.

    My next statement is not directed at you, just the larger forum audience - I fear that some in this forum are taking the view, "Well, it works for me and friends so don't change it." are missing the larger picture.

    I believe it works for those who take GAC into consideration when building their rosters. It works even better for those who adjusted about 20 months ago when the community discovered how matchmaking in GAC works. When reading complaints from users who feel oytmatched I sometimes get the impression that the complainer doesn't really understand how matchmaking works. At other times I get the impression that the complainers feel they deserve just as much reward as those who actually make an effort to win their rewards. I'm afraid that your suggested change could decrease the enjoyment when players play against 12 almost identical rosters every championship.

    For me personally it works about as good as the old matchmaking algorithm from before championships were introduced. My win rate remained pretty much the same after the change. However, after the change the matches became significantly more even while still giving strong, well developed rosters an advantage.

    Agreed, current mm works much much better and made it more fun.
Sign In or Register to comment.