I see... I'm gonna try a different strat here since it seems you are already prepared not to accept my replies as in "the dev team won't be transparent about it, so I’ll make some statements that are not Brawl specific and that can be proven if you just Google it around. So it’s not only me saying, it’s other devs and articles elsewhere, but to start, I think it worth mentioning the different MM we have in Brawl:
Trophy Ladder - total trophies serve as tiers, but the MM is mainly based on Brawler trophies, so it's normal to see 700 Brawler trophies from 20k/30ktrophies Players in the same match, as long as their brawlers have a similar number of trophies
Challenges - are based on the number of victories and losses, that's why the first matches are not recommended to play alone (because it's very chaotic, since literally, anything goes)
Power League - Is based on your Power League rank and doesn't consider any trophies (this might be the system you are looking for?)
(If you are playing together with someone, the MM only considers the highest trophy/rank in the group)
This is, of course, a veeeeery brief summary of the whole system. It's quite more complex than that, but I can ensure there isn't anything evil behind it.
- The first claim is that spenders (in your example, young kids) are our prime target and that the MM is designed to have a vicious cycle where they would keep losing matches constantly and, therefore, spend more to overcome this obstacle.
1 - This (gladly) can't be true because frustrated players (spenders/kids/adults or not) are more likely to churn from any game. If they keep playing and losing, they would just quit (that can be googled in many gaming articles about MM design)
2 - Or if you meant the other way around, where spenders are matched together with good players and against low trophy players, then it seems you would be on the "good side" of the rigged MM, right?
- The second part mentions that the proof is in the battle log, and I agree that the answer is there, but not to back up your suggestion. And I wouldn't recommend doing the test because it's just so much work over something that seems to be coming more from the emotional side of things rather than the rational ones, so:
1 - The MM rules are applied equally to both teams, so if we would get all the games you ever played, the trophy balance between your team versus the enemy team would probably end in a similar average. Sometimes you have an advantage. Sometimes the enemy does.
2 - It is known that we, people, do tend to focus/remember more the negative experiences rather than the good ones, especially if the good ones are not something outside the norm. If you play 10 games and in one of them, a teammate was just shooting against the wall or being bad, this is the game you'll remember and it'll be the one that gets to you
- It's not expected that a 20-win quest would take 60-80 matches.
1 - I really hope this is not the average, haha, because as said before, frustrated players churned
2 - For every team PVP game, the logic works the same. If you have a team that plays together constantly, you are more likely to win. If you play with randoms and you don't have the skillset to carry them, your chances of winning won't be as high
3 - On average (for any game), players win 50% of their games, so a 20-win quest should take, on average again, 40 matches (in a week).
- As regards to Frank's comment, I understand his point of view, but I'd definitely word it differently, haha. He refers to the literal meaning of the word. "Fix" as in fixing a bug or fixing something that is broken, which is not the case, because the MM is working as it was supposed to, so, in theory, it's not broken. But I do understand that what you meant was to be improved. So just a wording issue I'd say :D
- Then, moving on to this reply, I agree that Brawl is a lot more infuriating than Clash. And I'd be lying if I'd say I've never got angry from a Brawl match... so I do understand the vent, but I also understand that things can get blurry when the critique comes from a strong emotion rather than an analytical point of view.
- If you constantly face high trophy players, could it be because your Brawler is very high? Let's say you have an 800 trophy Brawler, but that's an outlier. You would be matched against other 800-brawler players, which, on average, have more Brawlers at this same range and then higher total trophies. So if that's the case, maybe a good idea would be to try different Brawlers and progress with them evenly. However, this also means that your team would be in the same situation as the opposing team, but still, you would be the outlier in this match.
- Considering total trophies was a change and also a suggestion from the community on how to improve the MM.
1 - There wasn't really an increase in complaints after that, MM and Lag were the top complaints since the global release, so we haven't seen any spikes after that change. We haven't seen any improvements either, but again, MM is a hot topic in every PVP game
2 - We, of course, have seen an increase in complaints after the Gears update, but seems to be because it changed the sentiment in the community, where made people more likely to complain about something
- Then there was this: "I am not opposed to some manipulation on your end, not at all, but this is unfair and unreasonable. It feels like you want to intentionally infuriate players, is that true?"It seems here the message is going beyond reason as if we are a corporation that enjoys seeing our players angry, so yeah, just a reminder that we are humans like you, by the way. And also, we wanna have a profitable business that is usually led by happy customers and not angry/frustrated ones.
SO, sorry for the wall of text, and unfortunately, this WON'T change the actual MM, but maybe with a different perspective, you could see things differently or maybe use this knowledge in your favor (maybe playing with the same team frequently or progressing lower trophy brawlers first and so on).
And I do agree that improvements can always be made; maybe trophy brawlers are not the best idea, maybe new players need better protection from veterans, maybe Power League should be applied to the trophy ladder, and so on... but at the moment we are focusing on things we believe are more important, so we might revisit the whole system at some point again. Or maybe just some tweaks here and there... let's see!
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