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Edited by Lost Sols: 1/2/2019 2:32:09 AM
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I Played 196 Games and Over 33 Hours of Iron Banner and it Made Me Love Crucible Again for a Week

Edit: for those who can't read to the end- [spoiler]going to post this up top since there are people who can't read through the entire post before commenting. I included mercy statistics because despite how awesome the matchmaking and player engagements are in IB, the mode isn't perfect and the scoring and lockdown mechanic lead to too many mercies when one team can get an early triple-cap. Also, power matters in IB and QP games don't trigger a mercy at 75 points if the other team is under 40 for those digging at straws to protect your farming grounds 👍[/spoiler] It is now the day after Iron Banner and, as I did after the last IB, I’ve gone through the numbers and what a story they have to tell. I will start off by saying that I played a lot of Iron Banner; in fact I played a total of 196 games over the 7 days. At an average of about 10 minutes per game, that’s about 33 hours just in the actual games. That is really significant because I was tweeting the days before IB started that I was ready to uninstall the game, I was so pissed off and aggravated playing QuickPlay. So I have a lot of information here from both IB and QP to go over and it really gets to the heart of why IB was so fun and QP is so not fun. Unfortunately I only have statistics from 113 of the 196 games because guardian.gg stopped showing player ranking from games at some point Saturday night. So I have the numbers from the 113 games it did record, as well as my last 113 QuickPlay games. So let’s dive in! [b]Iron Banner (sbmm enabled)[/b] [quote]Games = 113 Players = 1370 (+14 over base 1356) Bronze = 181 (13.2%) Silver = 780 (56.9%) Gold = 384 (28%) Platinum = 25 (1.8%) Diamond = 0 Master = 0 Games with Platinum players = 20 (10%) [b]Team skill breakdowns[/b] Losing Teams: 98 Bronze, 430 Silver, 155 Gold, 15 Platinum Winning Teams: 83 Bronze, 350 Silver, 229 Gold, 10 Platinum Mercy Rate: 25.5%[/quote] [b]QuickPlay (sbmm disabled)[/b] [quote]Games = 113 Players = 1410 (+54 over base 1356) Bronze = 181 (12.8%) Silver = 829 (58.7%) Gold = 277 (19.6%) Platinum = 75 (5.3%) Diamond = 40 (2.8%) Master = 8 (0.6%) Total players Platinum thru Master = 123 (8.7%) Games with Platinum, Diamond and/or Master Players = 63 (55.7%) Games with Platinum, Diamond and/or Master on both teams = 18 (16%) Games with Platinum, Diamond and/or Master on one team = 45 (40%) [b]Team skill breakdowns[/b] Losing teams: 106 Bronze, 443 Silver, 122 Gold, 28 Platinum, 8 Diamond Winning teams: 75 bronze, 386 Silver, 155 Gold, 47 Platinum, 32 Diamond, 8 Master Mercy rate: 4.4% [/quote] Now this is where a lot of the arguments against sbmm fall apart. There is a common myth that because the top 6-10% (Platinum), 3% (Diamond) and 1% (Master) are such a small percentage of the player population, that we will very rarely see them in games. This has always been flawed for a number of reasons. First, they may only make up about 10-14% of the actual PvP player base, but they are on and playing more than everyone else and so they’re a higher percentage of who is actually on and playing at any given time. Secondly, there are 12 people in each match. With no skill considerations, it stands that the overall makeup of those lineups will ultimately reflect the full spectrum. Out of every 10 players in games, over the course of all our games, about 14% are going to end up being top 14%. So what you get is the numbers above. Platinum thru master might only be 8.7% of the players in those games, but they are in 55% of the games. That’s 1 out of every 1.79 games that I’m playing in QP where there is a top 10% player running the floor with opponents and 1 out of every 2.5 that it’s just one team with the ringer(s). It’s not fun for anyone on the losing ends and even when they’re on my team it sucks just picking up scraps against a team that has no chance while one of my teammates dumps 35-45 kills. So compare that to my Iron Banner experience with no Diamond or Master players and only having to face a Platinum tier 1 out of every 10 games. The difference is playing 3-4 games and being so pissed I want to uninstall the game, to playing 196 games over a week and having the most fun I’ve had playing Destiny PvP in 3 years. It also allowed me to run different loadouts and use double bows for a huge portion of the week since it wasn't all Luna's/NF/DRB/Wardcliff on the other team all week. It cannot be overstated how much skill in matchmaking benefits 90% of the player base, and the kicker is that it’s basically a wash for the Platinum tier. Their sbmm experience is going to look a lot like QP now, and even the Diamond and Master tier still play the lion’s share of their games against Bronze, Silver and Gold opponents, but they will face more teams with at least a player their skill and they will also face more fireteams and less solo players. Another false notion that is set forth over sbmm is that is forces players into 50/50 win-loss ratios. That’s not true. Winning and losing is still in the individual player’s control, the difference is that sbmm seeks to put each team’s odds of winning closer to 50/50. It’s never going to be exact and one team will always have a bit more of an advantage going in, either on skill or fireteam size, but I’d rather have my odds closer to 50/50 that a 10% or 90% chance of winning going in. Also to the ever repeated comments that sbmm causes lag, Out of over 2352 players in my 196 IB games, I saw about 6-8 that were laggy and only 3-4 that were really bad. I hope this continues to show how much skill in matchmaking is a wonderful thing for the overall health of the game and I really hope that Bungie put it back into QuickPlay. It’s a real shame that we never got to experience how fun D2 PvP could have been from just the return to 6v6 and the new sandbox. I’m actually dreading going back to QuickPlay and as much as I loved the game last week, I hope I don’t hate it again by the end of this one. Also, this isn’t to say that Iron Banner is perfect either and can’t still be improved upon. One out of every four games being a mercy is way too high. I don’t think removing the lockdown mechanic is the answer as it does give a uniqueness to IB, but it could definitely use some love. Maybe disabling lockdowns until both teams hit 25 or adjusting the score multipliers or cap times. I’m sure there is a solution that can lead to less early blowouts though. Here are links to previous posts and videos I’ve done on the topic if you’d like to hear more. Thank you. A Beginner’s Guide to Destiny PvP Matchmaking https://youtu.be/s6ilnUPwiPE A Deeper Dive Into Destiny 2 PvP Matchmaking https://youtu.be/4dqWoyy52Ho Last Iron Banner Blog Post https://lostsolsdestinyblog.tumblr.com/post/180254236110/iron-banner-by-the-numbers-and-a-deep-dive-into-d2
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  • Agreed. I enjoyed IB this past week much more than any other PvP since Forsaken dropped. While the knuckleheads cling to the mercy rate it is pretty obvious the mechanic of IB is kind of broken. I was queuing up with my buddy and the match would get called and I kept saying "why is he calling it?" Score was 70 to 40-ish and we were capping two zones when he called it. This happened a few times actually so I think the lock down mechanic needs adjusting. We cap those zones and go on a mini terror and the come back would be well on it's way. Anyway. Regardless of the mercies I still had more fun and even more so after I realized the mechanic is kind of broken and dumb.

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