Regarding Points Gained/Lost in 4v4 Feast (Light Party): The Exploit & How To Fix It

Hello, I'd like to discuss the point gain/loss system implemented for The Feast in the Light Party format and how SE can make changes to make it more fair to all the players playing and less exploitable.

As many of you may or may not know, there is currently an exploit that many of the top ranked players across several data centers (at least Primal and Aether) are using to quickly both rack up points, and prevent themselves from losing points should they lose. I will explain how the current system calculates point gain/loss and how exploiters use it to game the system.

The Current System & What's Wrong With It
Currently, when playing a match, the system calculates the average ranking of all 4 players on each team. Based on the difference between the average ranking of the two teams, it awards the winning team a certain number of points (a minimum of +5 if one of the team's has an average ranking of around ~750 or higher than the other team) and deducts a certain number from the losing team. How many points you lose is also further decided by what tier your current average team ranking is in. For example, if your average team ranking is around 250-500 (Bronze) you would lose less than if your average team ranking was in 500-1000 (Silver) even if the difference between the average ranking of the two teams is the same. Sounds fair enough at first glance, right?

In fact, it is anything but. Many players are abusing the average ranking part of the system to quickly gain points even if they're playing against players rated far less than they are and to lose far less when playing players with a similar or even lower ranking than them. For example, consider the following 2 teams:

1600........0
0.............0
200.........0
150.........0

Average:
487.5.......0

The team with an average of 487.5 would probably gain around 10-15 points a game playing against this unranked team even though they have player ranked as a Platinum on their team. If the team with a rating of 487.5 somehow lost, they would probably only lose ~5-10 points and the other team would gain around ~30 I'd estimate.

Now compare this to another matchup:
1000 0
900 0
1100 0
950 0

Average:
~1000 0

In this scenario, the team on the left would probably only gain +5 points for beating the team on the right (which is fair, considering the ranking difference) while if they lost, they would probably lose around 30-40 points (which is again fair) and the team on the right would gain maybe 40-50.

What this means so far is that it is advantageous for gaining points for higher ranked players to queue with low ranked players to pull their average ranking down.

Lastly, let's examine a final scenario between our two ranked teams:
1600 1000
0 900
200 1100
150 950

Average:
487.5 ~1000

Now in this scenario, the team on the left (which has a Platinum player) would gain around ~30-40 points per win and would probably only lose -1 point per loss. Conversely, the team on the right would probably only gain +5-6 points per win and should they lose would be down ~30-40. And in some sense this is "fair" because if we assume the rankings accurately reflect a player's "skill" (which they often don't but that's another discussion), then the team on the left should be rewarded for beating a team with a much higher rating. That said, the Platinum player has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Even if he lost 10 matches in a row, simply winning 1 game whether it be through the other team having a bad break or a d/c, he would be up +30/40 points despite having a <10% win rate and being much higher ranked than anyone on the opposing team. And even if the high ranked teams try to "stop" him by either beating him repeatedly, or by playing more often, the player they're trying to "stop" cannot lose more than -1 point (which is nothing) per game and if they try to simply play/win more often than the other person they are still at a huge disadvantage since they will probably only be getting +5 per win and -20+ per loss while the other player is getting +20 per win and -1-5 per loss.

Conclusion:
As it is now, players who play together regularly as a team are punished by the ranking system for it. Meanwhile, high ranked players who are playing with players who have vastly lower rankings gives them a huge advantage on outpacing others with regards to ranking points, even if you're already 500+ points ahead of the competition. You lose less per loss, gain more per win, and in many cases (such as when playing many of the new/pick-up teams), you still vastly outmatch or are relatively close in skill to the opposing team.

A Proposed Solution
I have heard several possible solutions to this dilemma but I will just state my own. I think the best way to address this is to have your points gained/lost after a match be a comparison of your own personal rank versus the enemy team's average rank. What this does is it prevents high ranked players from being able to farm low ranked players for massive point gains by simply queueing up with other low ranked players. It also means that high ranked players will not be able to get off scot-free to losing to other teams. If they lose to a high ranked team then they would lose a reasonable amount in comparison to their own high rank. If they lose to a low ranked team they would be heavily penalized like every other team that has a high average ranking.

I think this change would also encourage players to form more static and high-level teams which will result in more high-level/intense games as well as team rivalries which ups the competitive aspect of the game mode.

But there are many other ways SE could go about addressing this so long as they DO address it! Feel free to leave your feedback and tell me what you think/how they could fix light party feast rankings.

Image examples:
http://i.imgur.com/VmZUJVX.png

http://i.imgur.com/GnAh9oP.jpg

I have a few suggestions.

- Remove rewards from LP. Then people who want good matches will still play, and people who want to exploit the leaderboard will not care as much. I heard a story about another player getting mad at a team for "sniping them", why do players like this want Rank 1 if they know that they can't even beat the best teams on the datacenter?

- One suggestion I have heard [Finalfantasy Xiv from Excalibur] was that they should add a Palace of the Dead save system to LP. You would have two different teams you could queue with. If you delete your save (your team), your team loses their ranking. I would also add the restriction that if you delete a team you couldn't queue with the same team that season. This would make the system less exploitable.

- Add a tournament system for LP at the end of the season. If SE is serious about PvP and generating hype around it, they can make an event at the end of the season. Top players can form teams and go at each other in a broadcasted, bracketed tournament at the end of the season. The top two of this tournament would get the rewards of the season and would get the bragging rights of being the actual best team on the datacenter. Yes, not everyone would be able to make this, but that isn't an issue because if they want to win, they will find time to make it. It is easier to clear out one day than 15 weeks after all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TiramisuMacaron

Remove rewards from LP

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So much this. Rewards for LP was such a mistake, I don't know why SE fell for this. And now expoliters will have a unique mount?... Which we'll never have because its timed exclusive???....

How about an exclusive belt instead. Nobody will miss it if they'll 'miss' it. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TiramisuMacaron

- Remove rewards from LP.

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This this this. Light party rewards have brought the absolute worst out of this community. Give it back to people who want to be there.

The only alternative I see to removing the rewards entirely is a combination of two things:

1) Have the queue available only during certain time windows. Example: on NA servers, you can only queue during 5pm EST > 1am EST. This would take out the factor of win traders doing their "work" during the wee hours of the night and morning. You might say that some people who work off hours may have trouble participating, but guess what? The queue doesn't pop during off hours anyone which is what allows people to win trade.

2) Make a system in which you need to register a team, like is in place for Palace of the Dead. This way the exploit mentioned in the OP would be null and void, totally fixed.

Yes, PLEASE remove light party rewards, or at least let Light Party Ranking only work during Data Center Prime Time.

Registering LP teams to participate definitely sounds like the way to go, and the proposed solution in the OP is also good. Requiring people to only play at prime time is impractical (some people have jobs or live in different time zones to every datacentre) but this exploit is as clear as day from the description in the original post. Rating should mean more than this.

It's pretty funny seeing all these advocates for removing rewards from light party feast now when it initially had no rewards in the first place and SE surprisingly relented and implemented them after the backlash they got from the community for not having them in place. Classic example of careful what you wish for if I ever saw one. It's too bad they aren't nearly as quick nor willing to remove the quick chat and bring back normal chat despite the current uproar over it even though it's arguably a much bigger issue than the LP rewards ever was.

Registering teams like potd will not make things better. That used to be how WoW's 3v3 etc calculated rewards and it lead to more issues. If one member of your team has to stop playing you have to start all over or accept your current rating as final... If you want to play _now_ and your team isn't on until later, you can't... etc. A smarter personal MMR system would allow you to play as you choose.

As far as rewarding LP, weekly/bi-weekly/monthly tournaments seems like the best system in rewarding the best teams. A season of personal rating dictating your standing is just asking for world champions to bot an army up and win trade to the top.

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

It's pretty funny seeing all these advocates for removing rewards from light party feast now when it initially had no rewards in the first place and SE surprisingly relented and implemented them after the backlash they got from the community for not having them in place. Classic example of careful what you wish for if I ever saw one.

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The problem is not LP rewards. The problem is how SE implemented the system, which is beyond broken. When people spoke up about LPrewards, they were likely thinking about the team ranked systems from other games.

In addition to a faulty system, SE does absolutely nothing to stop cheaters. One thing not mentioned by the OP is that the #1 player in the first image got those points by wintrading with 7 bot accounts using MMOMinion and queueing up at 6AM when nobody else was playing.

While I like there being some sort of incentive or "trophy" (doesn't have to be an actual trophy but something to show off) for the top teams, I wouldn't mind them changing the nature of the reward. For example, I think it'd be really cool if SE took the top 4 teams on each Datacenter and streamed a tournament where maybe the winning team got something special (and the other 3 teams could get a participation award as well). Of course they'd need to implement some sort of team registration system... but the point is the reward would be more just getting the opportunity to play on an official SE stream which might have 100+ viewers instead of some virtual item that someone else will be willing and able to cheat to obtain.

All of these suggestions are fantastic. I really like the palace of the dead, restricted queue time, and tournament suggestions.

I think that a teams strength should be determined by its highest member, not the average, and they should reward points on your personal rating vs. the other teams highest guy.

Ex: 1000, 0, 0, 0 vs. 500, 0, 0, 0

Left side team has a strength of 1000 vs 500 for the right hand side

If the 0 guys on the left hand side win, they gain a good amount, because they beat a team higher rank than them. Ditto with the 0 guys on the right.

The 1000 guy will get +5 points if he wins, and the 500 guy will get a decent amount of points.

This will help people rotate in new members if someone has to drop for a season and it discourages people from using alts to boost their own score. It also encourages even teams because you're better off if your team mates are the exact same rank as you if you're the high guy.

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Originally Posted by Blubbers

I think that a teams strength should be determined by its highest member, not the average, and they should reward points on your personal rating vs. the other teams highest guy.

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That's an interesting suggestion that I hadn't considered. I think it might even be better than my own original suggestion in some regards since with mine you could still prevent other teams from getting many points for farming you by keeping your team average low. Although I think I might have already identified a possible exploit; couldn't people theoretically organize it such that they "use" a high ranking character to boost other characters on the opposite team? e.g. instead of needing an opponent of 4 high ranking players (and thus a high ranking team average) to get big gains, you only need one person who has a high ranking. You could theoretically then level up a team and split that team up and level up against each of the 4 members one at a time.

So like, rank up a team to 1000/1000/1000/1000. Then you could split your 4 1000's into 4 teams (with 1 1000 ranking and the rest random unranked) and go through all 4 of them to 'power level' a team up.

But I suppose that would still be better than our current system since another team could step in and steal/intercept their points a lot better than in the current system.

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Originally Posted by Bartleby

You could theoretically then level up a team and split that team up and level up against each of the 4 members one at a time.

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Definitely, that's the main disadvantage of it - after you get someone high it's easy to boost others... You could always say the lower guys get points based on their team strength, which is determined by the highest guy. This solves the issue of it being exploitable at a cost of not really being able to viably replace a team member in your group as they'll never catch up, but I feel like that's probably less of an issue. You could also give the lower team members just marginally more points, like +10% of what the top guy gets. If it's small enough it might not be worth the time to exploit the system to boost these guys. If you fix the queue time window it also helps the win trading boosting issue.

Also one thing I forgot to mention is you could also make it so if you click withdraw from a queue, you lose something like 5 points. This would discourage people from purposefully avoiding others in queue and worst case if someone on your group misses the queue it's only 5 points so whatever. It would be another step towards discouraging win trading.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blubbers

Also one thing I forgot to mention is you could also make it so if you click withdraw from a queue, you lose something like 5 points. This would discourage people from purposefully avoiding others in queue and worst case if someone on your group misses the queue it's only 5 points so whatever. It would be another step towards discouraging win trading.

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That might not be a bad idea either.

They're too busy thinking up new quick chats to care.

Once I saw how low activity was in light party after the pre-season I pretty much knew LP was going to be a joke. It was either abuse the system by swapping teammates all the time or actively win trading, which often went unpunished.

Solo works in preventing win trading in that with as active as it is, it's harder to get on opposing teams in order to abuse it. With LP this was never possible because it was pretty much always dead.

That isn't to say solo doesn't have it's problems. I know of a couple people that got other people to play on their accounts in order to get themselves in a safe spot. again unpunished but we all know SE doesn't have the drive to ban actually cheating than banning people who trash talk.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

That isn't to say solo doesn't have it's problems. I know of a couple people that got other people to play on their accounts in order to get themselves in a safe spot. again unpunished but we all know SE doesn't have the drive to ban actually cheating than banning people who trash talk.

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wow that's pretty pathetic. Though to be fair I'm not sure how SE would police that anyway. Have a team actively monitoring IP addresses in the feast maybe lol? Even I think that's probably too much effort to put in for such a small aspect of the game.

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

wow that's pretty pathetic. Though to be fair I'm not sure how SE would police that anyway. Have a team actively monitoring IP addresses in the feast maybe lol? Even I think that's probably too much effort to put in for such a small aspect of the game.

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You could just check the IP discrepancies and consistencies between the 2 accusers. If you say "player y is on player x's" account, then SE could see if there was a log in session from player y's IP on player x's account.

Not perfect, but it is easy.

Don't forget about people on alt accounts throwing matches to prevent their mains from getting pushed out.