Author Topic: Penalizing Squads  (Read 6923 times)

Level9Drow

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Penalizing Squads
on: October 29, 2018, 12:07:04 AM
Please stop penalizing squads with hidden difficulties. I'd be nice to make squads with players I enjoy playing with, but I have to turn them down because they're a liability.

Lehi

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #1 on: October 29, 2018, 07:27:02 PM

Level9Drow

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #2 on: October 29, 2018, 09:39:25 PM
because they're a liability.
LOL

It wasn't a joke? And you must not be aware of what's going on with squad creation.

PohtHehd

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #3 on: October 29, 2018, 11:49:20 PM
I could be wrong but I've never heard anyone talk about a hidden difficulty for pre-made squads.

It certainly has some logic to it but even in the code we see that the difficulties are set up based off your MMR and nothing else.

Again, there is a lot of information there so I could be wrong.

Can you prove it?

Like make a video or something of a group of Raiders showing your MMR and theirs then what the MMR was at the end. If it is significantly different then there may be an issue. If not then there isn't.

Level9Drow

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #4 on: October 30, 2018, 12:26:45 AM
check the forums, this has been a thing for a while. You can check the damage you've taken and gauge the health of the enemy based on the damage you do.

for example, a difficulty of about 40% will feel like it always does. But, when you make a squad, especially a 4 man (at least a group of mostly 100+), you will notice the enemy AI become bullet sponges and do WAY more damage. BUT, when you get to the finish screen where it tallies your points you will see the difficulty is at 40%, but clearly had the enemy values at what would normally be at 50% or higher. But it just says 40% difficulty. It wouldn't be SO bas if it said "50% squad bonus to difficulty" at the end because then the system would REWARD us for 50% difficulty. The problem is it's rating us at a 40% difficulty when we worked at a 50% difficulty.

I stopped joining groups after this happened REALLY bad one day with a full squad. We kind of notice until after a few games and then we found it odd that a bunch of veteran players from level 150 to 350 were getting trashed by missions with difficulties, it said, in the 40ish %. After the third game the group got really demoralized, and we broke group under very bad air, and we never grouped again. And  I still won't until MSE says they've resolved this issue or correct it to properly display the difficulty and admit the game raises the difficulty for squads.

I strongly believe that if the game tells you it is at a certain % difficulty enemy values should be the same at that given difficulty regardless if a player is playing solo or in a premade group. In other words, if a wardog mook has 200 health at 40% when in solo queue, he should also have 200 health at 40% in a group. NOTE: I'm not talking about MY MMR, but the average difficulty % the game creates for matches that is displayed at the end of the game.

PohtHehd

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #5 on: October 30, 2018, 01:20:04 AM
Sorry, I misunderstood.

It would be quite hard to prove this and I'll have to take your word for the other people talking about this because I am too lazy to go look it up.

I don't doubt your experience with the system and I believe you would pick up on such nuances as more aggressive AI and larger health pools. I have played in pre-mades a bit, far from often though, and out of them a bit as well. I haven't really noticed a large variance in difficulty.

Usually, pre-made squads do much better since you naturally will be in better communication. Given similar skill levels to randoms.

Do you think they should wholly remove it or adjust it; adding rewards or tweaking its effect on the game?

Level9Drow

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #6 on: October 30, 2018, 05:05:11 PM
Sorry, I misunderstood.

It would be quite hard to prove this and I'll have to take your word for the other people talking about this because I am too lazy to go look it up.

I don't doubt your experience with the system and I believe you would pick up on such nuances as more aggressive AI and larger health pools. I have played in pre-mades a bit, far from often though, and out of them a bit as well. I haven't really noticed a large variance in difficulty.

Usually, pre-made squads do much better since you naturally will be in better communication. Given similar skill levels to randoms.

Do you think they should wholly remove it or adjust it; adding rewards or tweaking its effect on the game?

What they have now, the "hidden difficulty", for squad making would have to go. In it's place they could do two things.

A) Simply display the actual difficulty and do not hide it, and count that difficulty into the equation when figuring rewards. I would also want them to add something that tells us they raised the difficulty for squad making, like "3 man squad adjustment +15%". This way we know what's being done and can decide whether we want to squad more or not, or if we need to lower MMR. 

Or B) Simply remove any additional difficulty assigned to squads and let the system work itself out by merely getting progressively harder as they succeed. This is how it was pre Spacelords patch. It averaged all your MMRs and that difficulty would be what it says it is at the end screen. A 45% was a 45% difficulty, just as it would be if you were solo queue, there was no added difficulty for squad making, just your average. I prefer this.

Hiero_Glyph

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #7 on: October 30, 2018, 05:14:42 PM
@Level9Drow

Wouldn't they have to admit to doing this first before they could address and fix it? So far they haven't admitted to doing this even though we all know that they have.

My issue is that if they are willing to lie/omit about this, then what else aren't they telling us? I mean the switch changes on In Shock were not listed in the patch notes until we called them out on it. So was that just an oversight or is it part if a pattern? And how many other changes have we not found yet? It makes you wonder.

Level9Drow

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #8 on: October 30, 2018, 05:40:45 PM
@Level9Drow

Wouldn't they have to admit to doing this first before they could address and fix it? So far they haven't admitted to doing this even though we all know that they have.

My issue is that if they are willing to lie/omit about this, then what else aren't they telling us? I mean the switch changes on In Shock were not listed in the patch notes until we called them out on it. So was that just an oversight or is it part if a pattern? And how many other changes have we not found yet? It makes you wonder.

It may be done as a gating mechanism and so they have less incentive to make us aware of it and would just write it off as "under the hood" game mechanics.

OR

It could be a bug and they are unaware of it and they will remove it.

Level9Drow

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #9 on: October 30, 2018, 06:03:14 PM
Update! Maybe it's not even tied to squad making. Draco made a post just now regarding odd difficulties here:

https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=3694.msg14206;topicseen#msg14206

Maybe the only reason I THINK it's tied to squad is because I normally keep my MMR at about 35% now, used to be 45% but that changed. so when I solo queue ate level 300+ and am with lower level players I probably don't notice the hidden difficulty spike because +15% to 20% on a 30% difficulty would not be noticed by me but in a squad where all of our averages are about 40% that 15 to 20% is much more noticeable. So it makes me believe it's only in squads. Now that he mentions this I have been in a few solo queues where it felt a tad but off as well.

Hiero_Glyph

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #10 on: October 30, 2018, 07:31:11 PM
@Level9Drow

Wouldn't they have to admit to doing this first before they could address and fix it? So far they haven't admitted to doing this even though we all know that they have.

My issue is that if they are willing to lie/omit about this, then what else aren't they telling us? I mean the switch changes on In Shock were not listed in the patch notes until we called them out on it. So was that just an oversight or is it part if a pattern? And how many other changes have we not found yet? It makes you wonder.

It may be done as a gating mechanism and so they have less incentive to make us aware of it and would just write it off as "under the hood" game mechanics.

OR

It could be a bug and they are unaware of it and they will remove it.

Bungie said similar things when they were caught cheating players in Destiny 2. Let's hope MSE doesn't have to repeat mistakes that could be learned elsewhere.

Level9Drow

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #11 on: October 30, 2018, 07:37:35 PM
@Level9Drow

Wouldn't they have to admit to doing this first before they could address and fix it? So far they haven't admitted to doing this even though we all know that they have.

My issue is that if they are willing to lie/omit about this, then what else aren't they telling us? I mean the switch changes on In Shock were not listed in the patch notes until we called them out on it. So was that just an oversight or is it part if a pattern? And how many other changes have we not found yet? It makes you wonder.

It may be done as a gating mechanism and so they have less incentive to make us aware of it and would just write it off as "under the hood" game mechanics.

OR

It could be a bug and they are unaware of it and they will remove it.

Bungie said similar things when they were caught cheating players in Destiny 2. Let's hope MSE doesn't have to repeat mistakes that could be learned elsewhere.

I favor the belief that, as an indie developer, they are more honest. But, as much as I wouldn't like to admit this, it's possible.

LordDraco3

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Re: Penalizing Squads
Reply #12 on: October 30, 2018, 11:58:12 PM
I would not jump to any malicious conclusions, I feel like they make tweaks based on data, and they often over-tweak, and then fine tune a few patches down the road. Difficulty is something that's always tough to manage. Low MMR was basically a ghost town, but now you have a legion from hell bearing down on you. Not just the spawn rate, but enemy behavior and damage feels way high. I'm going to assume they wanted to populate the low difficulties with fodder enemies, that would at least be a constant distraction and harassment, but accidentally modified their behavior to react like high MMR AI does (almost ALWAYS rolling when you go to punch, just being generally smart)

Here is a previous thread talking about why some of us feel like being teamed up in a squad is what does it. I want to preface it by saying it was started by the highest MMR player I have seen post-Hades update, they have played over 90%, so I take such a player's experience very seriously in regards to how MMR difficulty feels vs. what we are told on the results:
https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=2535.0