New MVP Calculations

First wanted to say thank you for a great game that continues to evolve and get better each week. My question is about MVP calculations. After the 5/10/2013 update they appear to make little sense on how the award is given. If player A goes into battle with a large army and does great with a high killed/death ratio and player b gets slaughtered and barely kills anyone it seems that player b gets the award. Could you please shed some light on how the MVP award is calculated. Thank you again for your hard work and am looking forward to even better things to come.

Dakota337

Dakota337 wrote:

First wanted to say thank you for a great game that continues to evolve and get better each week. My question is about MVP calculations. After the 5/10/2013 update they appear to make little sense on how the award is given. If player A goes into battle with a large army and does great with a high killed/death ratio and player b gets slaughtered and barely kills anyone it seems that player b gets the award. Could you please shed some light on how the MVP award is calculated. Thank you again for your hard work and am looking forward to even better things to come.

Dakota337

Thank you for your kind comments Dakota, we are really working to make this game better and better.

In regards to MVP calculation the formula works like this:

1) Get total of XP kills and multiply it by 2
2) Get total of XP casualties
3) Gather any XP casualties you inflicted with Friendly Fire and give it a negative value
4) Determine Army Points (APs) and assign a multiplier on the weaker armies

We will soon add MVP pts under each value (casualties, kills, APs multplier) so it can be more transparent.

Or we could just change the formula to who made the most kills and be done with it.

After fighting a good amount of battles with the new MVP calculations, I'm not too happy with the changes, I feel that they were handet out more fairly before, to the player that actually made the biggest impact on the battlefield.

Right now it doesn't award the player that turns the battle around, but rather the player that brings a small army, and runs it into the enemy and gets a couple of kills. I've already seen a lot of players that disconnected right into the game, with their three rookie units, that charged straight into the enemy.

When I then spend another 5 minutes finishing the game, being strategic and working hard. I think it's demotivating to see that this player recieved MVP when he got a quarter the amount of kills that I did, and lost almost all his troops. Just because he brought a small army.

Notelitten wrote:

After fighting a good amount of battles with the new MVP calculations, I'm not too happy with the changes, I feel that they were handet out more fairly before, to the player that actually made the biggest impact on the battlefield.

Right now it doesn't award the player that turns the battle around, but rather the player that brings a small army, and runs it into the enemy and gets a couple of kills. I've already seen a lot of players that disconnected right into the game, with their three rookie units, that charged straight into the enemy.

When I then spend another 5 minutes finishing the game, being strategic and working hard. I think it's demotivating to see that this player recieved MVP when he got a quarter the amount of kills that I did, and lost almost all his troops. Just because he brought a small army.

Hmmmmm..

In the end we could just make it so MVP is awarded to the player who has the best casualties/kills ratio, including the penalty for friendly fire and just exclude the APs altogether. We will definitely look at it on Monday once again. Thank you for the posts all!

RuneSlayer wrote:

Dakota337 wrote:

First wanted to say thank you for a great game that continues to evolve and get better each week. My question is about MVP calculations. After the 5/10/2013 update they appear to make little sense on how the award is given. If player A goes into battle with a large army and does great with a high killed/death ratio and player b gets slaughtered and barely kills anyone it seems that player b gets the award. Could you please shed some light on how the MVP award is calculated. Thank you again for your hard work and am looking forward to even better things to come.

Dakota337

Thank you for your kind comments Dakota, we are really working to make this game better and better.

In regards to MVP calculation the formula works like this:

1) Get total of XP kills and multiply it by 2
2) Get total of XP casualties
3) Gather any XP casualties you inflicted with Friendly Fire and give it a negative value
4) Determine Army Points (APs) and assign a multiplier on the weaker armies

We will soon add MVP pts under each value (casualties, kills, APs multplier) so it can be more transparent.

Or we could just change the formula to who made the most kills and be done with it.

Are you sure its working as intended? It does seem like there is something off because this change looks good, but by many accounts, it seems to be opposite of what you posted.

From what you said here, it looks like the formula is something along the lines of:

[ 2 * (AP value of enemy killed) ] - [ 3 * (AP value of friendlies killed) ] - [ 1 * (AP value of troops lost) ]

I personally think it is good to have AP as a factor - not just kills/deaths, otherwise you may encourage behavior that has high ranking players targeting the low ranking units first to get kills quickly for little losses and the lowbie players are stuck trying to engage the bigger units.

http://imm.io/15IRl

perfect example of how messed up this is

We'll have another look tomorrow and see what is going on.

Thank you for your prompt reply and attention

Yea, you guys are great at communicating. Its good to find devs like that.

Also, I just noticed that even though I was not awarded MVP on the scoreboard at the end of the battle, I was credited an MVP for one of my quests.

Perhaps its just a visual bug that occurs sometimes?

Okay, something about this seems off. I think I can see why other players are complaining that there's bugs in it.



From what I can tell from how you explained it, having the weakest starting army there should have given me a bonus multiplier. Also, having the most kills should give me points above the other players as well. Finally, having the least deaths - and least deaths per starting unit, seeing how both their armies were completely wiped out - should have helped even more.

Every single part of this says I should be MVP, and yet it goes to a player who clearly did worse. Can you please explain?

Tops wrote:

Okay, something about this seems off. I think I can see why other players are complaining that there's bugs in it.



From what I can tell from how you explained it, having the weakest starting army there should have given me a bonus multiplier. Also, having the most kills should give me points above the other players as well. Finally, having the least deaths - and least deaths per starting unit, seeing how both their armies were completely wiped out - should have helped even more.

Every single part of this says I should be MVP, and yet it goes to a player who clearly did worse. Can you please explain?

There are no bugs and no miscalculations in the formula. The problem is that the MVP pts are not presented in the battle report and players aren't able to understand why the MVP was given to that player and not to the other.
We are planning on showing the MVP pts under kills, casualties and the multiplier under the APs, so as to make things clearer.

Not knowing exactly what units participated in battle, (types of units, levels, items, etc.) I cannot know for sure the MVP pts given to each player.

However, I will attempt to translate the result of the battle report you sent.

1) First of all, the multipliers given to players with lower APs than the biggest army participating in a CO-OP have greatly been reduced. This means that you, as the player with the lowest APs would get a 42% multiplier while Drakelione would receive a 23% multiplier. That means that you are receiving 19% more, in terms of a multiplier.

2) , I cannot determine the MVP pts just by looking at the kills and the casualties alone. What level of units did you lose? What level were Drakelione's? What type of units and what level were your kills? Drakelione's? The XP kills and therefore the MVP pts vary depending on the type of unit and its level, .

3) Friendly Fire involved?

As mentioned above, we plan on adding MPV pts under each category so players will be able to understand the outcome.

Quite possible actually depending on the kill/casualty value for all the players

The multipliers for each player are as follows:

First player: 1.57

Second player: 1.53

Third Player: 1

With today's patch the MVP pts will be shown under each value Kills, Casualties, the Multipliers and the Friendly Fire penalty.

After that, all the users will be able to understand why the MVP was awarded to the X player.

Always take into consideration that the Kill value and the Casualty value varies depending on the unit type and the level of the unit.

I could have 100 kills (just archers Rookies) and someone else 40 kills (Heavy Infantry 3rd lvl) and the second player would have been awarded more MVP points than me.

Do some units of the same rank give more MVP points? Would killing a rank 3 archer unit give more, less or same amount of points as killing a rank 3 Light Infantry unit?

Piktas wrote:

Do some units of the same rank give more MVP points? Would killing a rank 3 archer unit give more, less or same amount of points as killing a rank 3 Light Infantry unit?

If I'm not mistaken Light Infantries and Ranged Units share the same kill value, with slight differences. All the rest are significantly different. Heavy Infantry kill is worth almost double the kill value of an Infantry.

thanks

I dont know how much i really like the idea of MVP, since it can encourage poor team work in favor of score fluffing, it creates a kind of competition in a co-op environment. I havnt seen too many instances of that though, but it can still happen. Why help your ally when letting him die will give you a better shot at mvp ? And it cant measure 'support' either, some co-op games are just being a wall for some archers who kill everything =/

Khor wrote:

I dont know how much i really like the idea of MVP, since it can encourage poor team work in favor of score fluffing, it creates a kind of competition in a co-op environment. I havnt seen too many instances of that though, but it can still happen. Why help your ally when letting him die will give you a better shot at mvp ? And it cant measure 'support' either, some co-op games are just being a wall for some archers who kill everything =/

Well, if you don't help your ally, then you might lose the battle, right? Also, in the near future we will add a "People's Choice" system with which you can rate and report another player.

Finally, if you are causing friendly fire, it will work against you as you are receiving a penalty for any friendly casualties you may cause.

Love the MVP points on the scoreboard. Definitely a great addition.

Some feedback on it after doing several co ops:

• FF penalties seem a bit low right now. Even as an elf who uses archers quite a bit, I wouldnt mind seeing FF be more costly. I think they should be significantly more costly than the lost MVP score from those units dying to discourage cross-player FF.
  
  
• Also, do my unit losses that were caused by FF from other allies detract from my MVP score? My opinion is that they should not.
  
  
• And if I FF on my own units, does that add to my FF penalty? Personally I think they should not since those are my own units I'm firing upon - but it should still penalize me for those units lost.

Overall, I see a place for the tactic of calculated decisions to FF my own units, but I would want cross-player FF to be heavily discouraged.

It seems that the calculation is (kill score - loss score) x multiplier. (ignoring FF)
I think that the multiplier should NOT affect your looses.

To have the weakest army and get the highest penalties doesn't seem right.
I think it should be (kills x multiplier) - losses


Oh and I agree that MVP actually doesn't reward good team play but the player who mobs up fleeing enemies better...

Quote :

FF penalties seem a bit low right now. Even as an elf who uses archers quite a bit, I wouldnt mind seeing FF be more costly. I think they should be significantly more costly than the lost MVP score from those units dying to discourage cross-player FF.

Already in tomorrow's patch.

Quote :

Also, do my unit losses that were caused by FF from other allies detract from my MVP score? My opinion is that they should not. Its a choice I am making with my own units.

Not completely sure. I have to check on that. Logic states no.

Quote :

And if I FF on my own units, does that add to my FF penalty? Personally I think they should not since those are my own units I'm firing upon - but it should still penalize me for those units lost.

Again I am not sure. I have to check it out as well.

Quote :

It seems that the calculation is (kill score - loss score) x multiplier. (ignoring FF)
I think that the multiplier should NOT affect your looses.

To have the weakest army and get the highest penalties doesn't seem right.
I think it should be (kills x multiplier) - losses

The multiplier does not ignore FF.

If we concentrate on kills only, then the efficiency of an army cannot be determined, as the most efficient army is the one who inflicts the most kills with the least casualties.

I meant I was ignoring FF in my formula

And I don't mean to ignore looses completely but they way I understood it was that the multiplier should giver newer, weaker players a change to be pvp too.
But if that multiplier affects looses too its not really fair for the newer player.

Just did a co-op and we were finishing up the bad guys, my lone dwarf squad barely survived with a wounded hero and 5 dwarves. Was mopping up the LAST skeleton, one skeleton, when a human squad of archers at close range shot, when that ONE volley hit, i lost 4 dwarves and all 3 hp on my hero, and these are geared dwarves with 55 endurance, WOW that was a painful hit. They held a chokepoint to guard my 2 gunners against FOUR squads of skeletons, that one volley was more deadly than any of those squads were.

His total friendly fire penalty was 30 ><... that seems low for killing a hero

RuneSlayer wrote:

Quote :

And if I FF on my own units, does that add to my FF penalty? Personally I think they should not since those are my own units I'm firing upon - but it should still penalize me for those units lost.

Again I am not sure. I have to check it out as well.

I just did a 1v2 PvP match. I had no other allies, yet I was penalized for FF on my own units.

I can see the reasoning going either way on this, but I lean towards the thinking that self FF is a calculated decision that has to be made sometimes. It should not be penalized twice in addition to the unit losses penalty.

Quick Feedback - MVP and FF numbers feel a lot better now.