Mercurysteam's Hangout
BARRACKS => Gameplay Feedback => Topic started by: LordDraco3 on October 30, 2018, 05:29:03 PM
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5P_cpm65c
In the 11 months I've played, I don't think I've ever been spawn camped at the first lyre sphere altar before. Our team just fell apart from a disconnect and a barely-moving Alicia, but the spawn rate feels like it's been cranked up to 11.
Imagine my shock when I get to the results screen and see 34% difficulty
I have played most missions at 60+ all the way up to 70%. This 34% felt like one of those 70% games. Not only was the spawn rate crazy high, but enemies were extremely aggressive and fast to respond to every action.
Any time I antag this particular mission when I'm 50 MMR against a team in the 30's, they have only 3 enemies on the map, max. Plus 1 commander, maybe, at any given time.
I played some games the other day in the 40's with some of my regular teammates that have played 70+ difficulty, and we all agreed the game felt crazy hard, as if we were still playing in the 70's. HBaT taking us to Survive before even saving Lycus, barely surviving through Short Fused, etc.
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YES, Draco with exhibit A. Thank you, Brother, for shedding light on this.
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Good so I'm not going crazy and the AI are hitting really hard after the update.
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I have been hovering around 30 to 40 mmr and In some levels there are just boarded of enemies. I find that I have to rely on Valerias whip for crowd control, otherwise were overwhelmed. This includes elites soldiers as well.
There's also the fact that the enemies hit harder. I
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Seriously and if your wounded my god they are like sharks going on a feeding frenzy. Ive been wounded and the enemy swarms me shooting and hitting me. No chance to recover. Wounded a half second later dead. It shows in my last second 7 different enemies got a piece of me.
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Difficulty is insane sometimes. I think players became so good at the game that every patch passively increases difficulty ^^. I'm gonna wild guess here and say difficulty also scales with levels. Playing local in medias res is like a death sentence. Any mook looks at you the wrong way and you are dead. Shotgunners 1hit you from across the map(not even kidding here), assaults down you while they run to cover, and if you are wounded you will die before you even finish your strike animation. I'm fine with hard games but you need to reward people for it. Don't hide difficulty from players, instead reward them for hard games, hell, even give them some mercury points(like 3-5) for insane games. Instead you just gate the progression of players(like there isn't enough already). You know what players will do? They will drop MMR either by afk antaging or fucking their team over. Either way you just make players frustrated by spending like 1-2 hours just to drop MMR where they can play normally.
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Difficulty is insane sometimes. I think players became so good at the game that every patch passively increases difficulty ^^. I'm gonna wild guess here and say difficulty also scales with levels. Playing local in medias res is like a death sentence. Any mook looks at you the wrong way and you are dead. Shotgunners 1hit you from across the map(not even kidding here), assaults down you while they run to cover, and if you are wounded you will die before you even finish your strike animation. I'm fine with hard games but you need to reward people for it. Don't hide difficulty from players, instead reward them for hard games, hell, even give them some mercury points(like 3-5) for insane games. Instead you just gate the progression of players(like there isn't enough already). You know what players will do? They will drop MMR either by afk antaging or fucking their team over. Either way you just make players frustrated by spending like 1-2 hours just to drop MMR where they can play normally.
You hit it on the nail! Many people use many different techniques to lower MMR. The quickest way is suiciding and it sucks when it's not a full squad. The fairest, but longest way, is by AFK/peaceful antaging. But it takes so long. It would be nice if the antagonists could surrender, I will gladly take the hit to MMR. In fact, that's what most of us doing this want.
But why do we HAVE to lower our MMR in the first place? Why would a game be created to disincentivize a growing MMR? What's wrong with the system that would cause players to feel they need to lower their MMR? The developers have to look at this. I think there is a possibility that the reason the situation is the way it is now with difficulties, rising MMRs with less rewards is a gating mechanism. They have to decide if it's worth it or not because people are going to continue to lower MMRs.
I'm even starting to think I should ask people on the steam channel or discord to form MMR lowering squads, where we group to surrender 4 or 5 times lower MMR to a more tolerable and, most of all FUN, level where rewards aren't compromised.
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ME might have tweaked the damage receive based on each player's MMR, but I could not tell how much damage other player received, so this is just a speculation.
All of them were in your squad? Was it happen to the Alicia be not in your squad and she in around 30% MMR?
Your MMR was 52, so it is possible to match with someone with 34. (someone says the matching range is upto +/- 20%)
The life of the hollow ones seemed to be low so you can 2-hits them, but the damage felt like 50%MMR+. (1 shot of autorifle Dog/Hollow = about 11, but the rate of fire..)
Patch 11.0 tells me the following:
https://spacelordsthegame.com/news/spacelords-update-11-patchnotes
- Increased enemy spawn rate at low difficulty levels.
- AI behaves more permissively at low difficulty levels.
- Decreased enemy damage at low difficulty levels.
So, the life of enemies and spawn rate are at low MMR setting, but the damage seems to be high MMR, like 50 MMR+.
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This was a random PUG, no squad.
I'm 52 MMR so the rest of the squad would have had to be in the low 30's high 20's for that final result of 34% to make sense.
- Increased enemy spawn rate at low difficulty levels.
- AI behaves more permissively at low difficulty levels.
- Decreased enemy damage at low difficulty levels.
I can tell the spawn rate, and that's fine. Low games with 3 enemies on the map are hardly even worth playing, and as antag, it's just a 4v1 fest..... but I still encounter those when I antag people at this same difficulty.
The enemy behavior is clearly not all that 'passive' and their damage still feels pretty high to me. Again, I feel it important to state, that I've never been spawn camped at the first lyre sphere altar until this match. 2 aleph-charged commanders practically walked right up to it to take it themselves!
In the past, Kuzmann was a required character on this mission. For a while, the balance allowed a more diverse team. But from the sheer number of highly-aggressive dogs on the map, it would not have been possible without a lichtbogen or whip in this team. I don't find it to be acceptable that a team must have perfect composition for a 34% difficulty match. I guess I'm still stuck in the past (as in, the entire game's life pre-spacelords) where 30% was suuuuper low. Now I hear players complaining about difficulty in the 20's and 30's!
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The Lyra sphere mission has a crazy spawn rate, when I play it is like a nonstop killing or the field is filled with enemies in few seconds... and I'm talking about elites that shoot from long distances.
And the council spawn is insane... can overrun you easily
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On the subject of how MMR affects AI, this is the coding that I have been given, posted from 10/22 so it is post-patch 11.1
skill is MMR difficulty, of course.
"AIDifficulty": [
{ "skill": 0, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 3.45, "melee_damage": 0.32, "melee_damage_received": 3.14 },
{ "skill": 10, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 1.90, "melee_damage": 0.57, "melee_damage_received": 1.76 },
{ "skill": 20, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 1.24, "melee_damage": 0.85, "melee_damage_received": 1.17 },
{ "skill": 30, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 1.04, "melee_damage": 0.99, "melee_damage_received": 1.02 },
{ "skill": 40, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.99, "melee_damage": 1.00, "melee_damage_received": 1.00 },
{ "skill": 50, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.92, "melee_damage": 1.00, "melee_damage_received": 1.00 },
{ "skill": 60, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.82, "melee_damage": 1.02, "melee_damage_received": 0.98 },
{ "skill": 70, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.68, "melee_damage": 1.10, "melee_damage_received": 0.91 },
{ "skill": 80, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.53, "melee_damage": 1.28, "melee_damage_received": 0.78 },
{ "skill": 90, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.37, "melee_damage": 1.71, "melee_damage_received": 0.58 },
{ "skill": 100, "shot_damage_received_by_players": 0.22, "melee_damage": 2.86, "melee_damage_received": 0.35 }
],
So to me, this formula sounds like enemies have a set HP, say, 100 HP for a wardog (don't know these actual values yet), but MMR dictates how much your 150dmg shot or 80 damage punch actually hurts them.
Not particularly relevant to our talk about spawn rates and behavior, but maybe this can shed some light on how much damage it takes to kill something maybe feeling inconsistent.
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Hi guys,
The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.
Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.
As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)
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I think the game is too much challenging for a 34% MMR. It's 3 out of 10, not even normal. In almost every other game that difficulty should be a piece of cake, why is hard as hell here?
It's not that amusing because the balance between fun and challenge is broken.
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… Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging. …
Okay, it is already challenging as HELL, but when can we expect the fun again?
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Oh, it's fun.
But, the combination of Spawn rate of Low MMR (High spawn rate) & High Damage (due to high rate of fire) for High MMR is not playable. High spawn + Mid/mild damage is OK. I can feel I play Dynasty Warrior. I love Loath.
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Hi guys,
The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.
Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.
As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)
With all do respect, the game is not fun when you're wounded by every shot, or overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies. If theres a hoarde of enemies, fine, but can the firing rate and damage be reduced?
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Hi guys,
The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.
Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.
As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)
You have the player number data, how is "fun and challenging" working so far?
Players want to win. In ME3MP we grinded easier difficulties when we couldn't get a group together or when learning a new class because it was easier. We didn't want challenging because we had randoms and/or were trying to have fun playing a new character. Sometimes we were just trying to grind credits or experience. But again, we did not always play on the most challenging difficulty because sometimes when you are grinding it's nice to just have fun.
Anyway, you do what you want to do, and the players will do what they feel is best for them. Best of luck.
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Hi guys,
The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.
Good to know.
Thanks for the Update Valeri--uh i mean Karen
*whispers* (I dont trust her) lol
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Hi guys,
The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.
Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.
As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)
Hello Karen!
I think what people want is consistency. Currently we don't know what to expect, a 30% could be filled with super mooks, or the next day 45% could be the old 45% we are all familiar with from pre Spacelord patch.
It's also dangerous to have this sort of randomness in the 30% bracket because of the spawn rate. And if you have random difficulty spikes then add a high spawn rate this makes for a disastrous situation.
Again, predictable consistency would be the most comfortable game style for most players. If you want hard challenge then do REALLY good and get your MMR up. If you want to relax you keep it at 30%, etc... But what you've told me makes me just feel like the most advantageous way to progress is to lower MMR all the way down to 10% because you never know. At least at really low levels the chances of having a normal game experience may be more possible.
Thanks for the response in any case. We appreciate it. :)
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Maybe the difficulty is being tweeked because people are lowering it, and the developers want it to be at a certain difficulty.
If a majority drop to say lower than 30% difficulty then it gets increased at the lower end to compensate. Either that or some people are skewing the figures at the difficulties at the high end above 60%.
If definitely seems to get harder with each update to the point I wonder why as I doubt the very high end of the scale at 90%+ difficulty is even being used. It would be nice to know what the highest someone has got the difficulty to since the most recent update though.
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But we were kind of forced to lower our MMR because it often was too hard in the first place. When you hot 60+ it gets a bit absurd. So you had to lower it because if you didn't then the amount of losses would exceed the amount of wins in solo queue. It was counterproductive to progression to grind up MMR.
Id they're compensating for this and making lower difficulties harder and harder this will do two things. A) Make it so players will drive MMR even lower which ties into B) This will have a bad consequence for new players who don't have the passive stats or forged weapons to handle high difficulties, but since low difficulties are now hard but with a higher spawn rate this will mean not even they are safe at low percentages.
The developers have to ask themselves why players are even lowering their MMR in the first place. I can't speak for others, but my reasons are as follows...
Higher MMR doesn't increase rewards. The more harder it is the more of a chance of a lower score you will get or failure. Succeeding doesn't give more rewards than you could already get at a more moderate MMR. Too low and you CAN'T get a 9 point score, but the old 38% to 45% was a good "Goldilocks" zone that was easy enough that you could still get a 9 point score.
Secondly, it's not fun anymore. I don't mind elites being badass, I want them to be. But the mooks start to have 3 or 4 times more health than us and can one shot you. At a certain point you literally cannot kill them fast enough in relation to their spawn rate with MAX exterminator weapons. Simply no fun.
Challenge is fine as long it's not at the expense of progress. Once it becomes a hindrance to progress it no longer has a function. UNLESS...you are gating the players. I hope this isn't the case, and if so, they should find other methods to gate.
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Dear MS,
If the regular enemies take 3 headshots from Iune's Wisdom to kill, you are still not understanding the game isnt just too challenging, its ridiculous. You can put the little numbers into your computers and rebalance mmr all you want but at the end of the day if a single hades division soldier has over 300 health and shotguns that can crit over 200 damage and drop me with one blast then...then...oh nevermind..
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I agree. Consistency is key for a good game experience.
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Hi guys,
The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.
Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.
As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)
Thanks for the reply Karen!
It's good to know that it changes that often, at least. Most of us probably aren't comfortable with that fact, but I was HOPING my main takeaway from posting that was the summary I included at the end of my post: That it seems like difficulty doesn't necessarily modify enemy health and stats in the way that we would assume, but it modifies how numbers are calculated when a player and enemy do battle.
Like at max stats, a Raider punch should do 80 damage without boosts. At 0 MMR, this table looks like that enemy would technically be receiving x3.14 from that punch to their unknown health bar, so if they have 100 health, they are dead. But at 100 MMR, they only take x0.35 of that 80 punch damage, meaning it will take 4 hits to reduce them to 0 health. They always had 100 HP, but the user never sees how these numbers work, so we assume they have over 300 health. Which is kinda their effective health. But it differs depending on shooting vs. melee.
It also shows me that at really low MMR, shooting is more effective, and at high MMR, strikes deal more.
This is my takeaway from the table, at least. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting it correctly, but I know I've seen some posts here and there mentioning "Schleuder is lying about the damage it does because it's saying 500 damage and this grunt isn't dying but in another game they did" or something like that., and was hoping this might shed some light.
I am of the opinion that transparency to the player helps us understand why things happen and for what reason, and become less frustrated by it ;D
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If that damage scaling table is true and the way you explained it correct Draco. Why do we even have damage numbers to begins with as they are completely misleading. If it says 500 but you are actually doing half that why bother displaying an incorrect number? I know it's mostly the same as the mooks just having higher health.
I wonder if this applies when fighting other players to some degree?
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Hi guys!
As Karen said, it doesn't make sense to form a judgment through the screenshot, because those numbers are extracted from a local file which is not the real server-data file. However, I would like to shed some light on this matter:
Difficulty is, actually, tuned almost every day. Our goal is to maintain the game healthy, which we understand is a proper balance between fun and challenge. How we approach to that is not as simply as say "difficulty at % MMR is higher". MMR doesn't establish the difficulty by itself, MMR it's a system integrated in several systems iof the game. Every mission, game-mode (Co-op, vs Antagonist or Antagonist itself) or MMR have their own difficulties and so, their own balance; and besides all this, the fact that players are always getting better as you're improving your skill and/or have better weapons, cards, etc.
Nonetheless, we understand that some frustrating situations could happen, especially on High-MMR matches. We obviously work to achieve the best game experience for everyone, but it's on the ends (both highest and lowest) where the "rope" is more tense and where changes are more noticeable. We always try to be subtle on those points, but as I said before, the resulting difficulty does not depend on just one factor.
Hope this helps you to expand your vision of this topic. We'll keep working to bring you the best experience.
Thank you!
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… Nonetheless, we understand that some frustrating situations could happen, especially on High-MMR matches. …
Haha very funny! Since the last update, frustration is commonplace. My MMR is down at 36%. I just played "A Low Blow", we were three players (so a normal mentormatch-team, since the fourth player basically logs off). Two high level players and a level 1 player, the enemy spawn rate was so high that we were spawn-camped after the first few minutes. I mean the spawn rate was insane (3 elites, and a bunch of mooks right at the Raiders spawn-point, and more were closing in) and of course bazooka guys and snipers nearby.
No disrespect, but show me the fun in that, I could not discover it.
I have to say, lately I play less and less. And quess what, I am fed up for today.