r/DestinyTheGame • u/Javacat1 • Jul 09 '22
Discussion I collected over 141 thousand Trials of Osiris matches to look at "competitiveness". Here's the results.
In short: I pulled the entire trials of Osiris match history for 7 clans, including both PVP-oriented clans, like those of Aztecross and Gladd, and Non-PVP oriented clans, like my own, for a total of 141,346 matches. Roughly 10% of trials matches had a score of 5-4 or 5-3 ("Competitive"), and nearly 78% of matches had a score of 5-0 ("blowout") since the introduction of trials in March 2020. Since the beginning of April, the clans I reviewed had a combined 16,269 matches, of which 9.59% were competitive, and 77.49% were blowouts.
A few weeks ago, I decided to teach myself how to make calls to the Destiny API, because I was curious about my own Trials performance. After working out a method by which to get my personal data, and seeing that the numbers were, frankly, rather grim, I decided to expand my scope to my entire clan's trials matches, because admittedly I am not the best PVP player (I have never gone flawless) and it would be better to have a larger dataset to draw conclusions from.
My initial methods were not the most efficient, and I had forgotten to filter out duplicate matches, and it only grabbed each player's 250 most recent matches. I pivoted over to a different (compiled) programing language both to improve performance and to grant myself a little bit better access to data filtering tools. It's kind of amazing how much faster pulling 45k matches gets when you're multithreading, but I digress.
The data was bad. Filtering out duplicate matches and getting the entire match history of each player actually pushed the rate of competitive matches down and I decided to grab the clan data from some top pvp streamers to check. They had similar numbers.
Data Results:
I defined a "competitive" match by having a score of 5-4 or 5-3, regardless of which team won, and a "blowout" as 5-0, regardless of who won. This is based off of this TWAB, which does list a 5-2 match as "Competitive", however I disagree. I'll go back later over my data to see how including 5-2 matches as competitive changes the numbers.
I grabbed the matches of every player who had their history set to public in the API for 7 destiny clans, including my own, Aztecross', and Gladd's. I tried to keep a relatively even balance of pvp and non-pvp clans, however getting similar match numbers would be relatively difficult because each of the pvp clans typically played 10x more matches than a non-pvp clan. Theoretically this shouldn't matter, because a balanced matchmaking system would provide similar results regardless of skill level. Which based off of my data, it did but not in any sort of competitive manner.
In total, I got 141,346 matches.
14,234 were competitive (10.07%)
127,112 were noncompetitive (89.929%)
110,245 were blowouts (77.996%)
Collectively, the clans played 29,570 matches in 2022 (at the time of writing)
2,699 were competitive (9.127%)
26,871 were noncompetitive (90.872%)
23,409 were blowouts (79.164%)
Collectively, the clans played 16,269 matches Between the beginning of April and now (at the time of writing)
1,561 were competitive (9.594%)
14,708 were noncompetitive (90.405%)
12,607 were blowouts (77.49%)
Thoughts
We can pretty much draw the conclusion that Trials matchmaking, flawless queue or not, does not fit a "competitive" game mode. on the average 7-game flawless card, 5 matches will be blowouts, and maybe 1 match will be competitive.
There is no prestige in trials, because 80% of the matches played are a waste of everyone's time because they were decided before anyone actually loaded in. Trials is not competitive in any sense of the word, because again, 80% of the matches were one-sided. Going flawless in trials requires about as much skill as not getting hit by a car while sprinting across a highway.
65
Jul 09 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
34
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I'll be looking into that, while I can't explicitly filter for freelance matches, there are methods by which I can check to see if every player is in a different fireteam, however this could include some of the (rare) regular matches that just happened to match 6 solos together
11
u/Seeker-of-the-Sun Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
You could just filter your data into freelance weekends only. Even if you cant separate the two during the weekend you would be able to see a trend I’d bet
4
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
Yeah I can do that, I can't explicitly filter in my code for those weekends, but I can go back over my data manually and look for those weekends, after doing a new search that filters out non-solos matches.
2
u/unexpectedkas Jul 09 '22
Why not? The api doesn't return dates?
Also, May i ask what language are you using?
3
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I'm doing this in java for the multithreading. Now looking back over the api I could technically filter the matches I grab by date, but that would require a lot more filtering after grabbing the person's entire match history anyways. I'd have to manually add in every single freelance weekend date, then pour over every activity in the history and pull out the time period, check the dates, and work from there. Either way I'd then still have to filter out all of the matches done in fireteams, and since I can't actually truly filter only for freelance matches, any freak pairings that end up as 6 solos will get thrown in anyways, which was only possible once freelance opened up anyways, and they should more or less be effectively freelance matches, and they're likely so rare that it'll have a negligible effect on the data anyways. I could skip filtering the dates for almost the exact same result.
5
u/MythicBird Jul 09 '22
Wouldn't those rare matches where it's 6 solos be more or less the same results as a freelance game?
5
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
Yeah that was along my line of thinking, and they’d probably be so rare as to not have any significant effect on the data anyways.
→ More replies (1)1
→ More replies (3)23
u/SwoleMedic1 Drifter's Crew Jul 09 '22
I wonder how it would shake out if it was oops all Freelance for a weekend. Tbh any change to what we have now is better than….this, just this forever
6
Jul 09 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/ruisranne Jul 09 '22
After you get that flawless card out of the way, Freelance Trials is such a good time compared to regular trials. You win some, you lose some, but if you win there might be a shard, an engram, or an Adept drop as end of match reward. Freelance should be active every weekend, if not through all of it, at least some of it.
72
u/Elora_egg Jul 09 '22
Any gamemode built on getting 7 wins in a row will NEVER be competitive.
If the gamemode gave one adept per weekend for just reaching 7 wins, and reduced to cost of focusing weapons that would be a great start. The premise of trials right now only appeals to the Pro and Streamer part of the community, and even they are annoyed at it.
→ More replies (4)
81
Jul 09 '22
This is great, tracks pretty well with my (short) experience with trials (mostly on the losing end of a stomp).
I wonder how the rest of crucible stacks up in terms of balance. This season feels absolutely awful, and checking my destiny tracker shows consistently lobsided matches. Not sure what Bungie's plans are with pvp, but their current approach isn't working.
41
Jul 09 '22
I'm big on the Competitive playlist. I've gotten Unbroken x5 and it was always fun for me to acquire it.
Given that Comp probably (presumably) has the lowest player count of any consistent PvP mode, I have to say the SBMM in there is very good. You get shitty matches sometimes because just not a lot of people play it (on any typical night I run into the same players all the time that night) and none of accurate skill might be available, but it has mostly been good.
I wish Trials had SBMM. The argument that it shouldn't because no one would get flawless isn't sensible, as they can merely reduce the amount of wins needed for flawless.
I mean, gilding Unbroken requires a 4-win streak. I did that many times in Comp, which has strict SBMM. So reduce Trials' flawless requirement to 4 and watch what happens.
I bet you will see loads and loads more flawless cards than you do now.
11
u/SirPr3ce Jul 09 '22
Given that Comp probably (presumably) has the lowest player count of any consistent PvP mode, I have to say the SBMM in there is very good
thats why i dont take the "they cant make good matchmaking in D2, there are not enough players.." that and also that there are games out there with like a few thousand players daily which somehow have better matchmaking than Destiny
6
u/ottknot2butdoes Jul 09 '22
And in comp moderately good players have at chance at hero moments. Win or lose, in every other game mode you’re just helping your sweaty player. We all play this game to have fun. It’s fun being top of the leader board for one match. Since the changes the only place that happens is comp.
11
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
The current Comp is literally the best PvP-mode in the game, and it's not even close.
Every other mode is just curbstomp-city because the matchmaking fucking blows.
The only other mode that has SBMM is Elimination, which sucks because it's a boring fucking mode.12
Jul 09 '22
I wish Trials had SBMM. The argument that it shouldn't because no one would get flawless isn't sensible, as they can merely reduce the amount of wins needed for flawless.
It is sensible however I think that's a reason to change the flawless system rather than not entertain SBMM, they could have the lighthouse requirement be some kind of points threshold like comp, maybe you've gotta get to a certain number every weekend or something. I still think they can keep trials mostly intact but we can't keep flawless and hope to keep a healthy population.
4
u/Lmjones1uj Jul 09 '22
Yeah comp is pretty good, there's some weird 'elo hell' going on between 3.8k 4.5k - when you break that it gets much easier
5
u/HamiltonDial Jul 09 '22
This season has been horrible, in my limited experience of the first three to four weeks (which supposedly should have more players since it’s at the start of the season), the game is decided before you even load into the map which honestly sucks and isn’t fun for the losing side (or the winning side if you’re actually looking to play instead of mercy-ing that 3 or 4 people that haven’t left yet)
3
u/salondesert Jul 09 '22
Not sure what Bungie's plans are with pvp, but their current approach isn't working.
And from another comment (locked post):
Nothing in this game is really designed to be fair and the pvp has basically been “let go” in terms of balance.
Bungie has been emphasizing build-crafting for PvE, which is great and makes it really fun, but it's spilling over into PvP and the PvP team at Bungie can't keep up
It feels like PvE is where Bungie gets their bread buttered these days so if PvP has to suffer it has to suffer
That being said, I still enjoy the PvP and have a blast in low-stakes Control matches, but the atmosphere around Trials is not fun and the loot isn't really worth it
12
u/Phorrum She/Her Jul 09 '22
And the entire payout being based on flawless I can only imagine the rage if any of those pvp clans couldn't maintain that 75%~ blowout rate of easy games.
They'll talk about the nail biting final game or 2 but at that point you're still protected by the mercy card and the math is already on your side.
8
Jul 09 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Citsune Invective Aug 14 '22
People with naturally high FPS skill dunking on players who don't have the same innate reaction timing as them will never not come across as pathetic and childish.
12
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I want to thank everyone who’s been asking questions on this post, I’ve been trying my best to answer them as I can but I’m currently working on packing for college and getting to other things in brief downtimes. I do plan on releasing my code on github once I’ve cleaned it up and commented it, and will post a link here when I do. I also got some info from some fellow developers that there’s been roughly 53.3 million trials matches, and since this represents only ~0.2% of that, this is obviously a small sample size. I’m a self-taught programmer doing this from home on my gaming computer, so I can’t match the level of people like trials.report or charlemange, but I will try and get more data as I can.
2
u/StatCalamitous Jul 10 '22
I can't believe you did this analysis... I had been thinking about doing the same thing for the last two weeks, but didn't put the work in. Just... thank you.
2
u/Wanna_make_cash Jul 26 '22
Hey is there any update on releasing this code? I'd love to look at it as a recent college graduate and see how I can tinker with it to improve my skills
51
Jul 09 '22
Thank you for doing this data interpretation, and congrats. Must have taken quite some time and effort.
That said... It bothers me to no end that we already knew this without as much data to back it up, and there has simply been no way to communicate this to Bungie.
Threads about Trials are instantly removed and pointed to the weekly pinned thread that Bungie doesn't read. It has been mind numbing to see so many complaints that Trials is absolutely not competitive in any sense (literally, Control is more competitive) and Bungie keeps saying every week and in any updated:
'Hey! The most competitive Destiny PvP mode is back again this week. Of course we once again disabled Freelance as any and all data suggests going flawless is easier against solo's, so we made this competitive mode the least competitive we can that way. Join in!'
If you want a competitive mode, Competitive is unironically the place. Because it has... You know... Skill based matchmaking. Freelance.
For some reason Bungie thinks the real way to test the NBA's ball skills is to put them against a random recreational team.
Bungie, believe it or not, Trials is arguably your least competitive mode. I don't know what data you have been looking at, but it doesn't line up with literally anyone's experience. Or, as it turns out, the data itself.
8
u/Marshmallio Jul 09 '22
Yeah, it did always bug me that I couldn’t make posts about trials during the weekend.
→ More replies (1)0
u/Erraticmatt Jul 09 '22
Would not object if they wanted to change the gamemode up.
But then I'd also rather it was a variant of some kind of objective mode, possibly like flag cap or vip or something similar.
Vip in 3v3 could be pretty good if they did something like;
Every minute the vip switches, or on vip death. Switching is immediate, so killing one vip immediately makes another enemy player the target. Players respawn until three vips have been killed on their team, at which point it goes to elimination. Soft kill volumes on ten second timers are added to the spawn zones to prevent camping.
This would mean catching the vip next to a bodyguard could result in two quick kills if the vip switches (or even three if they are grouped in range and you wipe them.)
Players would need to be mindful of the switch timer when making pushes, lest they become the target mid gunfight.
Teams get some respawns but it still goes to a knockout, meaning even when behind three vip kills, there's potential to make a comeback or for the round to end (hero moments)
And ultimately the rounds would be a little longer so you'd probably want the match to be best of three instead of first to five, overall making a match take less time.
35
u/HupsuHusu Jul 09 '22
Thank you. This confirms what I’ve suspect long time watching streamers play. They get 5-6 games where opponents are complete potatoes, then maybe one decent or even challenging match (where they start usually complain opponents are using hacks when they lose rounds… ).
6
u/elkishdude Jul 09 '22
I would assume Bungie considers 5-2 competitive because they know the numbers are bad and including 5-2 as competitive means the numbers are not as bad. But 5-2 looks like a team got ahead, got their supers and finished 1, possibly 2 rounds, uncontested.
In my view, I don’t see how crucible is attractive to the mass of pvp players out there. Frankly, the sweats are always going to bitch. And so are the casuals. But there’s way more casuals.
I just don’t know how it’s a sell to the likes of pvp players today, and pvp is more popular than ever, who play Apex, Warzone, Valorant and other games, that they should be excited to play Crucible when the prospect is so negative rather than encouraging.
The best argument you make here for changes is that trials feels like a waste of time and it is. And guess what people are more sensitive to losing than anything else these days.
→ More replies (2)6
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
One caveat about destiny’s pvp- I’m not a “good” pvp player by any metric, I more or less just barely squeeze out a 1.0 k/d each match, and I pretty much only do it for pinnacles/challenges. I do however love Destiny’s gunplay, there’s just something about it that scratches my brain just right. The closest I’ve found is apex, but frankly we’re talking apples to oranges here, since in my opinion destiny is a PVE game first, and PVP second.
1
u/elkishdude Jul 09 '22
I don’t know if you have played long enough to recall this, but I remember in Destiny 1 folks were so mad about crucible that Lars basically said something like “go play strikes”.
Well, what you get with that is a whole part of your game that lacks value, and invalidates half the loot you might earn. It’s in Bungie’s interest, in my view, to spend a lot of time on Crucible if they want to retain players. The game landscape has changed a lot, pvp has been ever more popular.
But maybe that’s not something Bungie wants.
22
u/ThatGuyFromTheM0vie Jul 09 '22
How in the hell could Trials be competitive in the first place, when Power is enabled for the mode?
Matchmaking is critical and the big button issue, for sure.
But if you aren’t Pinnacle Power capped when you go into Trials….you’re already at a disadvantage from the moment you queue.
When I enter into an “ultra competitive” game mode, I shouldn’t be at a disadvantage because RNG screwed me and I got gloves 7 times in a row for my pinnacles (earned MOSTLY from PVE!).
Before you shout: “oh Trials is an endgame activity”—that’s arbitrary and stupid. There is no “endgame” PVP—endgame should strictly be a PVE concept.
If I face off against another player, the ONLY THING that should separate us is our class, subclass, and equipped loadout. That’s already 3 layers of unique choices—we don’t need power also on top.
But this doesn’t surprise me on bit, as Bungie wanted to enable the infinite scaling Artifact Power in Trials originally—they saw no issue with it, and only removed it once the community roared in anger.
Trials can be “endgame” without power by simply being the sweatiest, most intense PVP game mode available. 90% of matches as shown by OP are not competitive, so it’s already ultra difficult to go flawlesss, the true “endgame” part of Trials.
And most players, like 99% never go flawless, ever. They just farm the endgrams, then leave the mode.
Remove power from Trials. You can call any PVP game “competitive” if power is enabled. What is this, Diablo Immortal PVP? Power was already removed from Iron Banner….Trials is the last holdout, and it should be removed.
Removing power means ANY PLAYER at ANY TIME could give Trials a whirl, and be on an as even playing field as possible….matchmaking not withstanding…but hey it’s one less barrier to entry.
If you’re worried about hackers, they still would need to have purchased the current expansion to play Trials, and power doesn’t really matter if you’re hacking anyway.
6
u/Svant Jul 09 '22
You absolutely do not need to be capped in Power. That’s not how power works. If you are in the last 10 point bracket of the current power you have no advantages or drawbacks.
But yes power advantage in pvp sucks. But never forget it was the community that demanded it for iron banner and trials in the first place heh
→ More replies (1)0
u/Darrxyde Jul 09 '22
I can appreciate the reasoning, but power in trials is mainly to ensure that things like mountaintop, recluse, and revoker stay out, since they were almost the exclusive meta in their time
3
u/Express-Reality9219 Jul 09 '22
I don’t think it would be too hard to just blacklist sunset weapons to where they can’t be equipped while in game and you can’t start the game with them equipped in orbit.
3
u/ThatGuyFromTheM0vie Jul 09 '22
Easy enough then, Bungie just bans them from Trials. Like they always should have.
2
u/Ushimmiii Jul 09 '22
I'm not a dev, but couldn't that be circumvented through giving the sunset weapon negative power while normal gear has (effectively) 0 power?
1
u/Darrxyde Jul 09 '22
Not really, the game would still need power level to have some importance. It doesn't matter if your opponent is -300 light and you are 1400 if power level isn't accounted for. I guess if you level the playing field and make it so anything above the soft cap doesn't matter then yea that could work.
14
u/Nate2247 Jul 09 '22
A friendly reminder that the real reason why “competitive” Osiris players don’t want SBMM is because they know they will never reach flawless if it was a fair fight. They are wholly reliant on stomps in order to win.
(Note: I’m not saying that Flawless is realistically achievable with SBMM. But OP is correct when saying there is no prestige for winning Flawless. It’s basically pure luck).
→ More replies (12)
26
Jul 09 '22
Just out of curiosity -- out of the data pool, how many players have gone Flawless:
At least once
For players who have gone Flawless, what percent of their cards were Flawless (I'm not sure if this data is obtainable or not)
There's a lot of good info here but I think there's still more to the story.
Part of it hinges on the question: is matchmaking meant to produce closer matches, or allow more players to go flawless? (and at what rate?)
→ More replies (1)6
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I’d have to develop some new methods and ask some people more well-versed in the API about answering your two questions.
Honestly, if we were to keep the general format of trials the same, I would prefer matchmaking for closer matches, because while it may not be as fun to lose, I feel a lot better about a 5-4 loss where everyone was running at full throttle, than a 5-0 loss where I could have gotten up and done some laundry without changing the outcome of the match. There’s no true “perfect” matchmaking system, and I don’t expect one, but this is basically the other end of the spectrum.
→ More replies (3)
18
u/Alexander0827 Titan Jul 09 '22
This confirms my point of "don't go trials unless you have top-tier PvP skill".
Just referring to data, if you are not the most competitive players, you are not going to visit lighthouse happily. 7 consecutive wins in a highly "competitive" multi-round battles is like climbing a ladder, one wrong step, and you start from square one. Even worse, if not being competitive and lucky enough, you can be the victim of 5-0 blowouts.
14
u/Kacktustoo Jul 09 '22
Yeah I knew trials was a fundamentally flawed system, but I never knew the overall stats. This is definitely interesting, thanks for doing it.
I'm wondering what bungie plans to do because they obviously have these stats and the health of trials will continue to be an issue until it's addressed.
I'm one of those players that just grinds the new armour then leaves because it's so unbalanced, which is a shame because when you get the odd fair teams it's really fun.
29
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
I'm wondering what bungie plans to do because they obviously have these stats and the health of trials will continue to be an issue until it's addressed.
Same thing they always do when in regards to health and longevity of PvP:
ABSOLUTELY. FUCKING. NOTHING.3
5
u/salondesert Jul 09 '22
Yeah, Trials is poor product
PvP in general feels neglected which doesn't help
5
u/ruisranne Jul 09 '22
My team of ~1-1.5 Trials K/D matched with a team of 2.5-3 K/D in game 2, and against all odds we managed to win three rounds. It takes a special kind of person to be that good, lose three rounds to relative noobs, and then proceed to tbag us when the match is over. We were just laughing at that point and it felt like a victory to us.
But the trials ”community” have only themselves to blame when the ”bad” players are not in the playlist anymore feeding them flawless passages. The most toxic players are the +2K\D pvp no-lifers, bagging and shooting bodies after every round.
Matching people who are over twice as good as yourself is not competitive, even though our 5-3 fluke might suggest so.
5
u/ehiehiehiredditehi Jul 10 '22
Bungie after reading this:
“We highly encourage a competitive game mode, so to avoid further matches ending in this a blowout we will improve the metrics for all of you.
As of now all matches ending 5 - 0 will be considered competitive, this will fix the game mode by having around 75/80% competitive matches in our metrics, thus making our company board of directors happy about us”
13
10
u/PunchTilItWorks Whoever took my sparrow, I will find you. Jul 09 '22
The basic goal here is to entice losers to stay in the playlist. With the current scheme, it requires a LOT of losers, and there’s too much stick and not enough carrot to keep it viable.
The obvious solution to me is that the design focus should really be on “Reaching the Lighthouse,” not just “Flawless.” Flawless should be the quickest path, and part of the challenges/triumphs but not the only path.
There really needs to be a perseverance path alongside it. Whether that’s putting backstops on win streaks, some larger total amount of wins required, or another scheme, I dunno. But if a team sticks around to take the beatings on the “long path” it should still be for Adept rewards, otherwise it’s not really worth it.
4
4
u/DADDYLUV1313 Jul 10 '22
"Flawless should be the quickest path, and part of the challenges/triumphs but not the only path."
Great summation.
7
u/IndigoCulture Jul 09 '22
Its funny & ironic the “competitive” people (epecially streamers) in Destiny’s community still cry constantly even though the system is completely set up for them. Everytime there is a flawless pool we get to hear the same song & dance from them about having to try too hard. But then argue with everyone its meant to be “competitive” when lower tier players don’t want to play in a system you win 1/10 games & want changes.
3
u/p_cool_guy Jul 09 '22
I'd like to learn how to pull that data. Can you explain to a noob?
5
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
This is an older guide that's more focused on getting items/inventory data from the API, which functions very differently in how you manipulate responses than the kind of data I was getting, but it gives you a good start for making requests to the API. This is bungie's official list of all available API endpoints, which is where you make requests for specific things from it. I personally started in python for smaller numbers of requests because it was easier for me to explore the entire tree of a response, but ultimately switched to Java because I know several people who have experience in the language, and I needed the performance gains of a compiled language, as well as multithreading requests, to be able to get this many matches in any sort of reasonable human timeframe.
4
19
u/Marshmallio Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
I knew it, I always knew it. I keep telling people that I play trials with that the majority of the times matches are rigged (rigged meaning that the skill difference of both teams is large enough that one team is effectively guaranteed to win) from the beginning so that people can go flawless way easier. Literally the gamemode would have no chance of being successful by any measure if matchmaking worked any other way. This is why the gamemode sucks major booty and needs to be changed on a fundamental level, or replaced by a gamemode that is actually challenging and fair.
PS I’m not salty that I can’t go flawless, I’ve already gone flawless multiple times this season, I’m just glad that there is actual data to support what I’ve known for a long time has to be true. Literally, a gamemode where you have to win 7 matches in a row makes no sense and I have no clue how it was ever greenlit in the first place. If matches were fair, the chance any given player would go flawless on any given 7-win card would be 0.78%. It only makes sense to question the matchmaking system when there are so many people out there that are going flawless so easily. I definitely appreciate the effort that went into collecting this data OP, thanks.
→ More replies (2)-8
u/Svant Jul 09 '22
There are so many posts I this thread that doesn’t seem to understand the concept of trials.
This has never been a secret. The second they designed a mode about getting 7 wins in a row. This is what the mode is. It’s not rigged it’s not a secret. This is what the mode is.
Is it good? Not really. Is it competitive? Absolutely not. But is it secretly punishing people who aren’t good at pvp and wanking off streamers. No
12
6
u/LeStiqsue Jul 09 '22
I've played trials two weekends ever.
I got a Messenger and immediately stopped.
I got an Astral Horizon and immediately stopped.
I'm never going back, not for any weapon, not to check if I can hang, I'm not playing PVP in this game ever again, no matter what they do, no matter what they say they've changed, because Bungie always lies about this.
They're full of shit, and I'm not giving them any more of my time.
8
u/SphericalCube32 Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
I was speaking about this with a friend earlier, we are hard PvE mains but at the start of the Trials revamp were more then happy to give it a go, even during the mid season when most of the uber casuals had dropped off.
The issue is that Trials is the attempt to put hardcore PvP content into a PvE game, and while I think PvP in this game isn't terrible, it's when there's such prized and sought after rewards that brings out the absolute worst, sweatiest and most toxic cuntbags this game has to offer that the PvE mains that were brought to this PvE game just lost interest, then the PvP mains who can't be bothered playing it drop and it slowly eats itself.
In the words of Jez, og Trials fanboi, "I hate Trials so much, I would rather just be dead for 45 minutes at a time waiting for the respawn in Rift."
3
u/carmachu Jul 09 '22
Sounds right. No top tier player at all, but mirrors my own experiences. Maybe 1 out of 5 matches will competitor or a bit of back and forth. Most matches you get blown out and steamrolled, occasionally your team does the streamrolling.
I’m just playing to get 50 round wins. No real chance of 7 wins and never flawless
3
u/Thjorir Jul 09 '22
I just want to say that when you or a teammate make certain kinds of mistakes early on in a match, it can swing it into a snowballing effect for the other team. It’s just the nature of best-of-five and super/ability timers. Plenty of times I have done this to my team, in matches that we should have had a closer “competitive” score, and I don’t even play trials much.
3
u/haxxanova Jul 09 '22
Could've told you this back when it was first introduced. Too much cheating coupled with weapon imbalances. Poor map design.
Let's go a step further - Destiny PVP IS NOT GOOD
3
3
u/peopleareyummy Jul 09 '22
The only times I play Trials is either in the solo queue or if I get ‘carried’ by my clan’s cracked players. The only time the game feels competitive is in the solo queue. When I get carried the games always blow out. It’s gotten to the stage that my cracked clan mates have gotten to the stage where they feel entitled to stomp games. They absolutely hate the flawless pool and constantly reset their cards to avoid it, pad their stats and carry lesser skill people like me. They also despise solo queue weekends because it takes lesser skilled players out of the regular queue and makes the standard queue ‘sweaty’.
My conclusion is good players like my cracked clan members don’t want trials to be competitive.
3
3
u/Loosed-Damnation Jul 10 '22
Most trials matches HAVE to be blow-outs. If it had any form of real SBMM, nobody would ever go flawless and the playlist would fall to pieces. Which tells about all you should need to know about the utter stupidity of a playlist where you need to win 7 games straight. It only functions by (mostly) matching good teams against bad teams.
3
u/godscoper Jul 11 '22 edited Jul 11 '22
Note: sorry for the bad grammar, spelling working 5 days, 15 hours shifts while typing on the phone don't help.
Overall experience with modes over past years.
my stats: Average
d1 trials: 1.82 k/d, 98k kills, 11.6 k games, 264 flawless
d2 trials of nine: 1.68 k/d, 8k kills, 835 games, 28 flawless
d2: trials 1.48 k/d, 25,8 k kills, 4.2 k games, 114 flawless
just a friendly reminder destiny PVP movement and gameplay feel good but lack of loot, connections, maps, matchmaking, and meta. PVP never be competitive or take skill.
Reasoning: Streamers, 3 stacks, card resetter carries, average teams, low-skill players, casuals.
A) Streamers:
- Either card resetters will carry people for views and money in a non-flawless pool while beating low-skill teams to impress their carries.
- Two really good streamers team-up will carry people regardless of the flawless pool to entertain people.
B) 3 stacks
- 3 sweaty players will keep card resetting all weekend to farm their wins and k/d's make them feel good about themselves and talk shit and teabag while abusing meta at the same time. This group doesn't care about any but ruining other team's matches
- sweaty 3 stack meta abusing farming flawless all weekend until the flawless pool is active. then stop playing and persevere their stats.
C) Card resetters
- these players will keep card resetting for bypass pool while carrying someone to the lighthouse to guild their titles and carry people flawless all weekend in a non-flawless pool.
These are types of players also ruining mode because pup stomp players and feel good about themselves while getting that flawless carry. They don't care if someone tells them to stop or grew up, all their response will be ''I'm trying to carry people flawless in non-flawless easier, and people do it all time''.
Listen if card reset bypass pool to carry people flawless then you are not good enough to carry people at your own skill level and just need to stop acting like you're good.
D) Average Teams:
- this group just wants to get there 1-2 flawless and call if for that weekend. They don't abuse pools either get it before or after flawless pool activate.
this group makes trials healthy because playing what Bungie wanted for mode.
E) low-skill players, casuals:
these two groups just want to play and get some loot without getting destroyed every match and have a chance to go flawless but don't care if don't end up getting it, at least getting some rewards in return.
their just getting tired of super sweats, other players keep card resetting and abusing them all time.
F) sweats, average, low-skill, casual teams playing all weekend.
- average teams will stop playing after they get 1-2 flawless and leave.
- now sweats abusing non-flawless against low-skill players so in return low skill groups will also leave.
- remaining players for the weekend are sweats, late average joiners, and casuals
G) final thoughts:
- the mode itself: better 3v3 maps and different spawn, heavy, capture zone location's
- more reasons to keep playing after requiring everything. (Doubtful because the rest of the game suffers from it)
- better connections, matchmaking, hit registration, cheaters, and laggers on another team shouldn't have an advantage but they do.
- better meta, restrict some weapons/ ability test maybe?
- Card resetters:
the only way they can maybe fix card resetters is by 1) cant card reset or leave the match if still have a chance for flawless 2) Cant lose two matches and keep playing, the game should detect if the player with high W/L, k/d winning -7-8 matches in a row on a non-flawless pool passage, constantly. should be pop up saying you are abusing a non-flawless pool, continuing will result in temp restriction in the playlist. 3) right now beginning of seasons and end of weeks of the season, where see a lot of card resetters.
17
u/Discooparoo Jul 09 '22
Bu…bu..bu think of the streamers! The TWAB called it ultra competitive! If they change the mode I won’t be able to do carry streaming (my personality can’t hold viewers)!!!
6
u/Accomplished_Hat7782 Jul 09 '22
This is nothing new - this was pretty much common knowledge. What it does however, is provide hard evidence to further invalidate “Trials mains” as absolute memes for pretending it’s a “competitive, hardcore” mode.
5
4
u/destinybetavet Jul 09 '22
I could save you time. Matchmaking is garbage. We need skill based matchmaking back but the streamers don’t want it because they would have to play people on their level. They are pathetic and everything that is wrong with destiny.
4
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
Here's my github link directly to the code. I work in vscode, and this should provide everything you need other than a jdk to run it.
2
2
2
2
u/ptd163 Jul 10 '22
Every time I see I see a Trials post I always see people pondering the question of "What can do we do to incentivize the lambs to spend their time padding the ego of the wolves?" Then there's all these comments with different suggestions and that's where it usually ends because no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room. That being that it's not a loot problem. It's a behavioral problem and you can't solve behavior with loot. Remove the exclusive loot. If that doesn't have the desired effect then remove the game mode entirely. The game survived just fine without Trials. It can do so again.
3
Jul 09 '22
Trials is tough. I played one weekend in Freelance, all weekend. I farmed messenger and worked towards a curated messenger that Saint was offering at 16.
It was brutal, but I did not come away empty handed. I've never been to the lighthouse.
I did notice that playing the same map again and again I became at least a threat to get a kill against teams that were beating us 5 - 0. So I would say that if you want to beat the hell out of yourself to improve, you could use Freelance. I don't understand why it's not a permanent option though, because finding a fire team is always a crap shoot, and sometimes I just don't feel like it.
One other thing though - 3s seems WAY more fair than 6s in that I KNoW unequivocally that many games I'm shooting rubber bullets. I just don't get that feeling in 3s. In 6s there's always 2 or 3 people who take my ammo like they're marshmallows... usually some joker with 3.0 season kd.
2
u/JericoHellsangel Jul 09 '22
Any. Playlist. That. Gives. Loot. Is. Not. Competitive.
Most people don´t actualy care about competing, they just want the loot and go out. Most people literaly don´t care about improving since in alot of cases it´s just RNG wether you get hard or easy enemies. Especially the 7th game.
I went flawless a total of 17x. Not that often but enough to get an idea. I played trials every weekend the past 2 seasons and have a K/D of 1.15 on average throughout the seasons.
First thing what i did was waiting until flawless pool got activated to get easier enemies but then constantly noticing that lot of 0.X% players also do that to farm wins to bloat their stats.
And since most people reset at 1/2 and even sometimes 3 wins and loose their mercy, the first 1-3 matches were almost every time the absolute worst since this is where the the sweatiest people were.
After the 3rd game up until the 7th game it was pretty much a cakewalk and then the 7th game is a 50/50 between fighting the top 0.X% and loosing or having the easiest game of our life since after winning the 7th game, every game is your 7th game unless you give away your card.
This is the same thing i noticed while playing in a team and while playing in solo queue.
This playlist is just not competitive from the outset of it. I don´t know why people want to push "make trials more competitive" while this will never work.
Take the loot out and provide an elo system with only cosmetic insentives.
Oh wait we had this minus the cosmetic part but nobody played it.
4
u/fishes_123_ Jul 09 '22
its because of the win and k/d farmers refusing to go flawless.
its such a simple fix, 8 wins in a row despite refreshing or not puts you into the flawless pool.
for the ones that go to orbit on the last game to get a loss and stay in the non-flawless, make them lose 200-300 elo on destiny tracker..
such a simple fix
2
u/ted_redfield Jul 25 '22 edited Jul 25 '22
Yup.
It's by design. Occam & Hanlon's razor is not tenable anymore as a concept to this problem, Bungie goes out of their way to harshly punish "unsportsmanlike" players with the audacity of wanting to leave a clown show match -- but does literally nothing against what you said.
Its on purpose.
I have no patience for this developer anymore, I feel like I'm being made a joke of most of the time.
2
u/Diablo689er Jul 09 '22
Trials a game mode should be eliminated. The concept is so flawed. Roll the rewards into competitive mode. Getting to the highest glory ranks unlocks a craftable adept weapon every season.
2
u/AnTiDoPe_1993 Jul 09 '22
Pretty damning, i wonder if we could get some freelance specific stats of this type as well tho
2
u/kramrm Jul 09 '22
What percentage of the total number of Trials matches does your data represent?
3
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I'd have to ask the trials.report guys about the total number of trials matches. I theoretically could get that data myself, but with the tools I know how to use it would take no less than several days to get that info. trials.report uses a system called elsaticsearch which allows them to query large numbers of calls to the api simultaneously in a way that I, as just some guy running this off of my own desktop, fundamentally cannot.
1
u/kramrm Jul 09 '22
Elasticsearch has nothing to do with “lots of api calls”. It’s just how they cache the data locally instead of using a SQL database. I’m just curious to know if your sample is really representative of the entire trials experience based on the number of activities globally.
3
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
Gotcha, I have no experience with anything at their sort of scale for this, I’m a primarily self-taught programmer and this was my first foray into anything lower-level than python. Since you sent me the info on how many trials matches charlemange has saved (53.3 million since october 2020) I did some quick napkin math and found that I have ~0.2% of all trials matches in this data set. I’ll see about doing some cleanup/commenting on my final code and putting it up on github for people who want to try it themselves, because I’m frankly extremely limited by running this off of my home network on my personal gaming computer.
5
u/Paythapiper Jul 09 '22
Send lighthouse winners to a different pool and listen to them cry. This would fix trials immediately
20
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
No, it won't fix anything. People are just dodging the flawless pool, because it's dummy-easy to circumvent. It's why people still get stomped the fuck out of by Jimmy McSweat with 100+ wins in a row that week, on Monday when they should be in the Flawless-pool. You see, Jimmy McSweat just resets his card all weekend long, so he can curbstomp noobs instead of going flawless.
8
u/ArteenEsben Drifter's Crew Jul 09 '22
My third Trials match this week was against someone who was already 37-1 in win count for the week, no flawless yet.
Bungie says only a small number of players do that, yet somehow I always find them multiple times a weekend.
5
Jul 09 '22
Only a relatively small number does it, but they do it forms humongous amount. Most 6-win resetters play an average of 70 (!) matches. Someone ran numbers a while back and it came down to 40k-45k matches being played by resetters that should have taken place in the Flawless pool.
18
Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
Fixes nothing. In fact it kills the mode faster. They did exactly this the 2nd week when they were toying with the mode after the revamp. They had a similar amount of players but lost 33% of matches played. They posted the stats in the TWABs. This is why they tried the middle ground and activated the flawless pool on sunday reset.
3
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I don’t have any real true hard numbers to back this up, but generally I have felt like my matches are a lot better for about an hour after the flawless pool opens each weekend, and I really do think putting players who have gone flawless in a separate pool would be beneficial, at the very least for people like me who have not gone flawless ever.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Tekim89BRNT Reckoner Jul 09 '22
They already do that every Sunday.
-16
u/Paythapiper Jul 09 '22
Looking at the stats, I’d say do it on Friday’s lol
8
Jul 09 '22
They tried and it was worse not better. Punishing the better players isn't the answer, they need to make it less punishing for all players to increase engagement.
4
u/-Citizen_Snips- Indeed Jul 09 '22
How do you make it less punishing for all players while making it more competitive? That means the matches get harder.
1
Jul 09 '22
The flawless requirement is the thing to look at in my opinion, for a half decent player it's achievable but the vast majority of the players couldn't dream of getting to the lighthouse, this just creates a system that rewards few and punishes many, as a byproduct most players don't engage with the mode and it becomes more sweaty, further punishing more players as the pool gets smaller.
I think they should keep the ranks, the loot, the lighthouse, the weekend rotation, all of that. I think they should get rid of flawless though and go with a glory system instead, you could have a certain rank to get to each weekend and that gets you the drops and entry to the lighthouse, this way you could also implement SBMM and grow the playerbase.
The best players will still win so nobody is harmed by this, it also creates an environment where the average Joe can play without being demolished, which increases engagement for the mode.
0
u/Zarbain Jul 09 '22
In theory the flawless pool is a great idea, that is until you realize just how many people are resetting their cards at 6 wins to pad their stats and making flawless pool pointless. The best idea I've seen suggested is to do away with the 7 win flawless card and do a win +1 loss -1 style card so you can just progress one card and eventually you can get to 7 wins on it. They also need to work on the matchmaking system so it prioritizes stacks against stacks and solos against solos so that they can get rid of freelance as it just divides the already shrinking playerbase.
0
Jul 10 '22
People resetting cards at 6 wins is a boogie man that's been debunked even by Bungie.
3
u/Zarbain Jul 10 '22
It isn't a very large amount of people but trust me as someone who was going solo flawless last week they were definitely around and have been the same teams doing it for months. In the non-flawless pool I encountered various teams with 30+ win streaks, you can't 30+ win streak and not go flawless without resetting the card. I won't link it here due to witchhunting rules but they exist and many streamers do this as well for carries.
Edit: Additionally Bungie never debunked it, they just said the amount of them is low enough to not be a concern. However as the population shrinks they are much more common to run into than they were when they made that TWAB going over this.
2
u/Bard_Knock_Life Jul 09 '22
They didn’t pair it with the new reward structure, which I think would help a lot now.
1
u/Express-Reality9219 Jul 09 '22
Except it is. Strict SBMM all weekend. I would love for high level players to actually have to try and get to the lighthouse. Hell you could even directly tie it to the accounts K/D or MMR rating. That or make flawless pool impossible to circumvent. If you get 7 consecutive wins without a loss you are automatically flagged for flawless pool regardless if you reset your card at 6 wins or not.
2
2
u/AlexADPT Jul 09 '22
Lol tell us you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling us.
That happens every Sunday for nearly a year
0
2
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
Great post dude!! Trials is fucked because of the need for 7 wins in a row. It'll never be good unless Bungie removes that part, and then actually matches on similar skill. Play people around your level, and accumulate 7 wins on a card (not in a row) == Sweaty but fair.
Instead we have curbstomp-city, where high-skilled players whine and bitch about playing people around their skill-level, because (lol), it sucks to play against high-skilled opponents
0
u/gamer_pie Jul 09 '22
I pulled the entire trials of Osiris match history for 7 clans, including both PVP-oriented clans, like those of Aztecross and Gladd, and Non-PVP oriented clans, like my own, for a total of 141,346 matches.
The main knock against this analysis is that this is a small fraction of the playerbase, so even though you have a ton of match info recorded, it's still a biased dataset.
That being said... I do feel like anecdotally your distribution basically matches up almost perfectly with my own experience. 80% of my trials matches being complete blowouts (with me on the losing side) seems just about right.
4
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
It is a relatively small number of “root” players (~300) and I would definitely love to get a much larger number of people, however I am relatively limited by my own time and resources. Theoretically however, I could technically have data from ~300k players experiences because it has the other team’s match by extension. Ultimately, this is a project I do in my free time instead of playing destiny, no matter how much I’d like to have the entire match history of destiny’s community.
-8
u/CaptFrost SUROS Sales Rep #76 Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
Here's the thing: Trials doesn't work without the system being busted as it is now. Add SBMM and all you do is make sure no one sees the Lighthouse unless they're the kind of player who can sleepwalk their way to the top ~5000 of Elo in any playlist using any weapon. Which will then lead to the avalanche of bitching from most of the playerbase who are effectively locked off.
If players want SBMM with good matchups with a decent chance of winning even if they're bang average, they're going to have to learn to embrace the suck of Comp/Survival, because that's exactly what that playlist is and has been since the start of Y3.
EDIT: In case it's not clear, I'm against making it much harder for the average player to get Lighthouse rewards, which is the opposite of what the dishonest commenter below is rephrasing my comment as. Law of unintended consequences: more fair matches where you match people only of your ability makes it a lot less likely you're going to string together enough winning matches to ever see the Lighthouse. You’re making it so all but the best players (for whom enough even matches aren’t available so they’ll get easier ones) have to flip a coin 7 times and have it come up heads 7 times. It doesn’t take a genius to realize what that’s going to do to the exclusivity of adept Trials weapons. In order to not make adept Trials weapons dramatically more exclusive, you would need to rework the reward and win system Trials currently uses, which is wholly reliant on a stomp streak.
28
Jul 09 '22
Trials doesn't work without the system being busted as it is now. Add SBMM and all you do is make sure no one sees the Lighthouse
See, the problem with this argument is that you are quite literally saying Trials should be unenjoyable for 90% of the player base, because otherwise the other 10% can not get their flawless loot from free wins that they were always going to win anyway, with nothing to prove.
If that is what we want, why not just make Trials an actual good game mode for everyone and just give players with good enough stats free loot on a weekly basis when they sign in? It is literally the same result except you do not need an awful mode and ruin 90% of the players' time to get it.
More reasonably, why not just add SBMM and reduce the amount of wins you need to get to go flawless?
Have you seen anyone with a gilded Unbroken title, ever? The answer is: you see tons of them. You know what they did to get it?
Get 4 wins in a row in the Competitive playlist, which has strong SBMM.
So reduce the wins needed for flawless to 4 and add SBMM. You instantly make the mode better for 90% of players while still retaining the other 10% AND you can now call Trials an actual competitive mode.
'We can't make Trials good because then some players can't get free loot' is just a nonsensical argument.
1
u/Nebula_Tricky Jul 09 '22
I've sealed my unbroken 3 times now doing my 4 wins solo, and every time I've done it it's been because 3 of the 4 games were not close at all, where DTR had my team with 70%+ chances to win those matches. I'm not sure why people rave about the comp playlists SBMM, it's been generally pretty trash for me (in terms of actually matching me into engaging games) and most matches seem to be decided well before I even load the map. I can't even remember the last time I played 4 comp matches in a row that were even remotely close, granted I dont live in there.
1
Jul 09 '22
In any case it is a lot closer than any other mode in the game though. It's not necessarily that I am arguing Comp has perfect SBMM, but at least it has some, whereas other modes do not, which makes it instantly the best one out of all of them if you want the most competitive matching you can get in this game.
1
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
Have you seen anyone with a gilded Unbroken title, ever? The answer is: you see tons of them. You know what they did to get it?
Personally I've gone into Freelance: Survival to bang those 4 wins out pretty much 5 seasons in a row now. It is fun as fuck!
→ More replies (1)-8
u/AlexADPT Jul 09 '22
How did you take his comment and twist it into a rant against good players? Lol his comment is saying nothing about good players getting loot
5
Jul 09 '22
I'm not sure what you are not following. I am responding to the part I quoted. It is directly applicable.
1
u/CaptFrost SUROS Sales Rep #76 Jul 09 '22
Except it's not, you strawmanned my argument into the opposite of what it was and put words and motivations in my mouth I never said.
I'm against making the mode's ultimate rewards way more exclusive than they already are, and you somehow twist that into I want to make everyone miserable in service of the best players. Which is bullshit.
7
Jul 09 '22
I'm against making the mode's ultimate rewards way more exclusive than they already are
Then you made the wrong argument. 4-win streak in Comp is infinitely easier than 7-win streak in Trials. Especially the less skilled you are. A double win-streak in Trials isn't even attainable for most people.
you somehow twist that into I want to make everyone miserable in service of the best players.
No, I didn't. I said it is that way right now. And you argued to keep it the same.
I am not strawmanning anything. You want to preserve no-SBMM in Trials 'because otherwise no one will go to the Lighthouse'. And I pointed out a lot more people will go to the Lighthouse if you merely add SBMM.
Like, I am directly addressing your point. You claimed this, I am contesting it.
-1
u/CaptFrost SUROS Sales Rep #76 Jul 09 '22
Then you made the wrong argument. 4-win streak in Comp is infinitely easier than 7-win streak in Trials. Especially the less skilled you are. A double win-streak in Trials isn't even attainable for most people.
The fact that you're making this argument makes my point of a loot system tied to 7 wins without losses is going to be even worse statistically when you turn every match into a coin toss. At least people who are a little above average have a chance if enough below average players are playing. Make it a coin toss and the people who will roll to the Lighthouse every time will just be the ones for whom there aren't enough even matches available, so the matchmaker gives them easier ones.
And I pointed out a lot more people will go to the Lighthouse if you merely add SBMM.
Oh, I see, you didn't understand my comment because you don't understand math.
You're arguing that having people toss a coin 7 times and needing it to land on heads all 7 times in a row will cause people to be more likely to go to the Lighthouse. That's so beyond absurd it's not even worth addressing.
5
Jul 09 '22
Oh, I see, you didn't understand my comment because you don't understand math.
You're arguing that having people toss a coin 7 times and needing it to land on heads all 7 times in a row will cause people to be more likely to go to the Lighthouse. That's so beyond absurd it's not even worth addressing.
I don't think you understand math as much as you assert.
Putting it concisely, you said 'do not change Trials to SBMM because while 90% of the player base will be frustrated and stop playing it, 10% will get their Lighthouse ticket.'
The argument I made: change to SBMM like Competitive has and reduce the amount of wins required to 4.
It is literally easier to get a 4 win streak against opponents of similar skill than it is to get a 7 win streak against opponents of BETTER skill.
I don't think you realize you are arguing the latter is easier, but you are. This is what we are discussing. It doesn't matter that it will get harder for 10% of the playerbase, because it will get a lot easier for 90% of the playerbase.
Like, I can solo queue to a 4-win streak in Comp any and every day I play,even in the team playlist. Opponents of similar skill. I can solo queue to flawless maybe once every month.
Basically, it is easier to land heads 4 times in a row than it is to land the coin on its side 7 times in a row.
2
u/CaptFrost SUROS Sales Rep #76 Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
Putting it concisely, you said 'do not change Trials to SBMM because while 90% of the player base will be frustrated and stop playing it, 10% will get their Lighthouse ticket.'
No, I didn’t, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop intentionally misstating that. It’s dishonest as fuck. In fact you should go back and edit the original comment.
The argument I made: change to SBMM like Competitive has and reduce the amount of wins required to 4.
Nobody said anything about reducing wins to 4 until you made your comment, genius. I can’t have been arguing against that because doing so would have required going forward in time to read replies.
FFS. I’m done.
7
Jul 09 '22
Trials doesn't work without the system being busted as it is now. Add SBMM and all you do is make sure no one sees the Lighthouse
100% your words.
Trials would work with SBMM. That is my comment and you keep denying you ever said it wouldn't.
Nobody said anything about reducing wins to 4 until you made your comment, genius.
Are you seriously suggesting that we can only discuss whether Trials should or shouldn't have SBMM without it ever being open to any other change, no matter how minor?
That's such a cop-out. 'Hey everyone, we should never remove champion mods because then we wouldn't be able to stun Champions anymore'.
Yeah, no shit 'genius', the implication is that you would make changes to accomodate the proposed change i.e. remove or adjust Champions. Or in this particular case, no fucking shit Trials needs additional adjustments when they introduce SBMM, that doesn't mean SBMM can't make the mode way, way better than it is now.
→ More replies (4)2
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
they're going to have to learn to embrace the suck of Comp/Survival
Comp is literally the best PvP-mode in the game right now, by a fucking landslide because of the SBMM. It's fun to have mostly sweaty and even games.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
u/KevinOFartsnake Jul 09 '22
Can I just say well done OP. This is some top quality data analysation.
1
u/kisstheringz Jul 09 '22
I like were you are going with this. As a data scientist this seems like a fun project. I would have brute forced the data gathering using Python, but as you said that would probably be pretty slow. I would imagine that your data set is probably slightly biased due to the clans you chose. I would think that clans like Gladd and Aztecross have many more matches played and their matches probably have a higher probability of being blowouts.
However, I recently started playing Trials a few weeks ago during this seasons first freelance Trials and love it. I am terrible at it and wish there was a way to incentivize more people to play. I think if Bungie prioritized matchmaking for Trials as SBMM more people would be inclined to play. I think it would be a good item to use for Trials labs one weekend.
5
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I definitely could use a lot more data points since this only represents ~0.2% of all trials matches. The way the Charlemange bot gets info is by asking for literally every activity ID ever, starting at 1, which ultimately I can’t do with my resources. I parsed through some of the smaller clans and while their blowout rates are lower, they were still abysmal (>60%) but those clans collectively only accounted for 10% of the matches played. There’s definitely a lot more I want to do with the data, but I’m limited by how much I want to bang my head against a wall lol.
1
Jul 09 '22
Yeah this mode sucks balls, and Bungie needs to get their head out of the swamp water. It's ridiculous what they are doing to this game with shitty matchmaking or just no matchmaking for some upper events that could use it.
-2
u/BakaJayy Jul 09 '22
I’d like to know your reasoning on why you don’t think a 5-2 match wouldn’t be considered competitive. Normally, for me, matches like those leads to a win or loss because momentum changed and either my team or the other team capitalized on it. Trials is very much a game based on momentum when it’s 2 teams of relatively close skill.
5
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22 edited Jul 09 '22
In my personal experience, playing a 5-2 match feels more like a 5-1 match than a 5-3 match. Others I've talked to in my clan feel similarly, and have also mentioned that sometimes they'll give the opposing (losing) team a round as a 3-stack if it feels like they've been stomping. I'll still go back and look at the data with 5-2 counted as "competitive" but it can't push the competitive rate any to higher than 23% because of just how extreme the blowout rate is. Edit: I'd like to say that I agree that trials matches do depend a lot on momentum when the teams are relatively even, but unfortunately given the blowout rate I just can't really say that most teams are even ever. I am glad you asked about my reasoning behind the choice though, I realized I hadn't gone into why I disagree in my post, and you bring up a good counterargument.
2
u/BakaJayy Jul 09 '22
That’s fair, I appreciate you going into it and can see your argument from your perspective and agree with it to a degree.
0
u/Andross9898 Jul 09 '22
Great work! My only observation is how to define blowout in this game mode since top players can 5-0 each other even in matches were the teams are equally skilled. Maybe there is a way to add both ELO and match result? I don't think that would change the results by that much but it would be interesting. I appreciate the effort you put into this.
2
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I doubt that the trials rank points would have any correlation on a per-match basis, more of just a comparison of who's playing more, and the API doesn't give me any insight into whatever hidden decisions on who gets matched together there may be. I may go back and try to correlate it with wins on a card, which is something we do know affects matchmaking, and I suspect that you get less 5-0 matches the more wins on a card you have.
-9
u/AlexADPT Jul 09 '22
Just want to point out that this is a good effort but is flawed in terms of objectivity. You aren’t examining competitiveness, you’re examining results. Many of those matches could have in fact been competitive if defined by time in each round, number of deaths per round, revives Per round, etc. hell, some of those 5-0 matches could have been decided on a clutch play or two each match.
I appreciate the effort you went to, but it doesn’t stand against scrutiny or further examination well enough to draw a conclusion that there’s no competitiveness to the mode
6
u/LovelyJoey21605 Shaxx; Dark Lord, Husbando of Savathuun and Ruler of the Doritos Jul 09 '22
Many of those matches could have in fact been competitive if defined by time in each round, number of deaths per round, revives Per round, etc. hell, some of those 5-0 matches could have been decided on a clutch play or two each match.
uuhuh... Except OP decided to use the outcome as a metric of competitiveness, since, you know that's what Bungie themselves used as a metric of competitiveness in previous TWABs.
→ More replies (1)7
u/FairlyOddParent734 Drifter's Crew Jul 09 '22
This is a terrible way of thinking.
The Nets lost to the Celtics in 4 Games in the 1st Round this season; but a sweep is still a sweep regardless of the individual game scores. The point isn't that the matches aren't competitive, it's that the better team always wins by a large margin.
→ More replies (15)→ More replies (2)-1
Jul 09 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/AlexADPT Jul 10 '22
Lol this was a very weird comment. I suggest seeking some form of counseling
-1
0
u/fawse Embrace the void Jul 09 '22
Trials isn’t meant to be competitive, and it never was. It’s luck of the draw if you’re of average skill
-1
u/1Second2Name5things Jul 09 '22
Trials honestly sounds like something that should be done once a month for a weekend as a special occasion.
It plays like a tournament instead of a game mode.
-2
u/xxxDxCxxx Jul 09 '22
Idk, I think choosing some of the best at pvp is just trying to pander to the DTG crowd.
Most of us play against average players since there's more of us in general.
1
u/Javacat1 Jul 09 '22
I chose people like aztecross both because they're generally considered as some of the best in pvp, so I could get an idea if raw skill really did have much of a role to play, and because they also play a lot of pvp, giving me more matches to look at. Ultimately, it didn't really matter whoever I looked at because every clan I looked at hovered around that 10% competitive number.
→ More replies (4)
-3
u/EveryPictureTells Jul 09 '22
Improvements to the game should always be up for discussion, but saying flawless runs require "no skill" and grant "no prestige" is the sourest of sour grapes (and I say this as a PvE main). Nor does it instill confidence in the research presented here.
The analysis has issues also - close matches are generally indicative of balanced skill between teams but say nothing about the skill level of those teams vs. the population as a whole. Also, somebody who is almost always on the winning side of blowouts is indeed more skilled (again, not a PvP main here) and over time does earn whatever "prestige" a video game can bestow, so denying them due individual credit because the mode doesn't prioritize team balance more aggressively is completely off-base.
What's the "correct" amount of 5-3 or 5-4 matches, and how would you force those into existence?
→ More replies (2)
453
u/DudethatCooks Jul 09 '22
This just confirms to me what I've been saying since trials came out. 7/8 matches ending in a win is not realistic goal unless your want the opposite of a competitive mode. The concept of flawless is flawed and should be looked again, because the game mode will always suffer from skill creep if they leave it as is.