The best answer I can give you is “maybe”, which may involve reading “use in battle” in a somewhat broader sense. There’s part of the score handling that appears odd, I haven’t gotten around to poking it extensively enough though.
Sometimes the simplest answer is the right answer. 2 factors for what you are given for PvP points.
Now, I agree that on defense team score matters. But when facing it, some folks will get 70 points, some will get 35.
@MatrimCauthon I’m guessing you’re a higher level than me or around my level. Can you please SS what you see normally for 3 trophy PvP and post it here?
There’s not much of a mystery behind that, if you know both power ratings you can directly tell how much PvP points and gold a battle will be worth. The interesting part is which loopholes the new power rating calculation possibly offers to nudge the ratio more in your favor.
Gold payouts are based on a differential between the total score bonus an account has accumulated (or the maximum possible score an account can muster, which generally have the same limiters) and the score of the defense team. I generally just refer to MSP because MSP is easier to calculate. The payout formula has two components, a base which determines the minimum and average (average as in payouts you get for fighting opponents around your score), and another one which multiplies this by a certain amount based on how far they are weaker or stronger (again, to a minimum that always goes up with how much the players score modifiers increase). PvP points also go by the score differential, but also have a modifier for trophy slot and are clamped to much smaller maximum and a smaller range (still a really big range all things considered, which is part of the problem). The formulas appear to be similar, but not the same - you are given a bit more leeway until a gold payout hits dumpster levels than PvP point payouts.
Matchmaking also does dumb things and make things that don’t give good payouts appear as three trophy fights far, far too often.
Unfortunately, due to this implementation, payouts for a given score range has kind of a s-curve distribution. You’ll see a slow climb to get out of minimum payouts, then you’ll see a sharp change in payouts for small changes in opponents scores as you approach average and into “stronger”. People close to the top of the max possible score have far fewer opportunities to see maxed out payouts than those just a little bit off of the max. People a couple thousand points off max readily have access to people that give maximum payouts, and their minimum and maximum thresholds aren’t even that much different. As an example, my ~10k MSP accounts frequently see 69 point 2200ish PvP payouts. Seeing 70 is rare because my base is lower and thus I need a higher modifier to hit 70, which is after the part of the curve where the payouts have almost flattened out. However, nearly everything I get matched with is so much “stronger” that I’m hitting these 69 points payouts, with the occasional 50 or 60 something when I get matched appropriately.
If you have all the skill bonues for completing basic guild tasks unlocked, you have +980 score.
If you have a total statue level of over 500 (distribution does not matter), you have +500 score from guild statues, and you have maxed out how much score these can give you. So no difference to a guild with average level 80 something statues and all level 200.
These are the limits of how much your guild affects your payouts.
This isn’t just speculation. I’ve observed the changes in score and payout guilded and guildless, have extensive documentation on when it changes and how much (eg., leveling NOT gaining mastery, getting things that give skill bonuses and NOT the skill bonuses themselves). The “bug” they fixed was that defense team score calcs were tracking the bonuses from completed guild tasks, and personal team scores weren’t (however, gold payouts were still acting like the guild task component was considered). The retools they gave were to make level 10/5 star/10 star kingdom/and renown bonuses that coincide with skill bonuses slightly different based on which stat they gave (was previously a flat 40 for anything that happened to give a stat point, now is 40 for life/armor, 60 for attack, and 80 for magic), as well as making it so 10 star kingdoms and renown bonues actually can affect score (and also, you no longer get the score bonus if the stat isn’t unlocked, eg., if you had legacy 5*+ level 9 life kingdom, thats +0 score now where before it would have been +40). The thing they added were to make it so heroes on the team contribute greater score to the team based on how many talent levels they have unlocked (yes, whether the the talents are actually set or not), and how many weapon upgrades they have (no, not the rarity of said weapon, and no, the formula per upgrade or talent contributing score is not linear). I took notes on four accounts before and after the patch, and all observations supported this. In every single test I’ve done both before and since the last patch, a change in account score (and only account score) bonuses has predictably correlated to a change in PvP payouts.
Since the new hero score adding stuff is not part of your global score, this might be considered all “bonus” score that would allow you to fight stuff with greater (gold) payouts. This would explain why it is actually possible to get “high paying” battles at or near endgame, even if matchmaking almost never serves them up.
Level differential, by the way, barely matters to score once you hit 1000. The formula has some extreme diminishing returns. You get thousands of points by level 200, but level 1000 to 1200 is a difference of about 60-70 points, and it gets less from here.
So lets set the record straight. The following things don’t affect your account score, and therefore don’t affect any of the payout formulas:
- Leveling, or traiting any troop or leveling any class except possibly the first time reaching an ascencion or trait level on a given troop, as it pushes up the power of the highest score team you can make, which I call Max Score Potential, or MSP. It is unclear if the formulas use Global Score Bonus/Account Score (the amount of score your account has with no team) to do the comparison with defense team scores (modified by a static amount to simulate having a team), or just MSP vs defense team score. Everything you can do that affects GSB also affects MSP, but it is very easy to not have anything further that can raise your MSP and not your GSB (you only need a single level 100 champion level hero fully traited, any level 10 weapon, and any three fully traited level 20 troops of any base rarity including three of the same troop and you can never raise your GSB without also raising MSP ever again)
- Gaining masteries. No change in score whatsoever. Score changes with certain things that happen to give masteries, like levels, parts of guild statues, and one very specific kingdom level (level 10), but don’t give score otherwise (for example, hero class masteries, leveling every kingdom in the game from 1 to 9, etc)
- Skill points except for the ones stated. Only completed guild tasks, kingdom bonuses and faction renown milestones that coincide with skill points matter. Hero gets some “rarity” score for being on the team as they climb in levels (in addition to hero level score being a huge part of the score formula early on), but it does not directly correlate to skill bonuses the hero personally gets. Stats from team bonuses and pets don’t affect team score at all, be it your global score or the score of a specific team.
- The troops on the team you happen to be using. Nope, the game doesn’t care which team you use for the purposes of determining payouts.
- Your defense team. Might have a component in matchmaking despite devs flat out stating it didn’t a long time ago (couldn’t find the post, I’m sure somebody here remembers the discussion). No direct change to your global score/max score potential and no change to payouts though.
So lets go over why you might get way less payouts when your neighbor that is similar level with a nearly identical collection is getting way more:
- They have less renown that coincides with skill bonuses
- They have less 10 star kingdoms that coincide with a skill bonus
- They have less level 10 kingdoms or five starred kingdoms (doubtful for endgame PvP)
- They are in a guild without 500 points in statues (doubtful)
- They are in a guild that doesn’t complete basic tasks to have the associated bonuses (doubtful unless intentional)
- They are not in a guild at all (also doubtful unless intentional)
- They are currently in matchmaking pools that happen to give them opponents closer to their score and you aren’t.
Since matchmaking pools are the thing that can fluctuate wildy based on time of day and what is available and don’t correlate strongly enough with things that actually (currently) give score, they feel more and more like they are based on phases of the moon or whether or not mercury is in retrograde, this is why I keep saying that matchmaking are the core piece of the puzzle here that no longer serves its intended purpose and the easiest quick and dirty fix that could be implemented. Granted, 70 PvP points is likely not possible at the very top of the score potential (high 50s or low 60s may be if you get matched with an opponent in the 13600 range, I’ve seen 60+ point payouts at MSP 13308). If this happened consistently, thered be much smaller cause for complaint. The system would still need to be revamped because of the other factors, but it wouldn’t be in crisis.
tl;dr: Account score bonus (or the score of the highest score team the account can construct, which tends to directly track with account score bonus) compared the actual score of the defense team determines both PvP points and gold payouts, is readily observable and measurable, and the things that do and do not contribute to score have been extensively documented at this point. Payout formula breaks down when there are fewer (or no) stronger opponents, and always has. Matchmaking serves up opponents that can vary wildly based on a bunch of criteria, and always has (they just have bigger score gaps now because of all the changes). There is a much bigger effort gap to get the last few hundred points of score bonus than ever before, which creates the smallest advantage that any skill point bonus has ever given before. Power creep on troops further nullifies the actual power gap for any given set of skill bonuses. The combination of these factors effectively break a system that attempts to be fair and equitable (was the whole reason behind scaling payouts in the first place) into something that is probably the farthest from and also manifesting in the topic of discussion here - negatively impacting PvP payouts as as you approach max possible score bonuses to such a degree as to actually run contrary to the core progress loop of the game (to make it nearly universally “bad to progress” when you don’t have to progress).
If someone has a question about any of this, I’d prefer something I could get out in a short, concise answer, like hopefully a yes or a no, or maybe just PM me for some back and forth if I have time. It kind of surprises me that the exact causes of the issue still aren’t all that well known. I hope the devs at least have a handle on this by now. Sirrian’s post in the other thread leads me to believe he at least some of the big issues, but I think he might be trusting his telemetry too much and focusing on the “average” player use of a specific team or level range, and averages are very easy to bring down if the data isn’t properly parsed (for example, I hope it at least filters all the times I’ve left a match running for four hours or even overnight, and actually a huge chunk of my PvP recently has just been daily task teams anyways). Not everybody plays optimally all the time, some chunks of the playerbase at a given level of progression even less likely so, but PvP points should have never attempted to be “time equitable” for groups of players that aren’t playing optimally “on average” to begin with. The example he gave that suggested skill bonuses have even close to the amount of impact on PvP outcomes and times as stated are just so far off every experience I’ve had with purposeful play with optimal teams is wildly different from what I’ve experienced, and what I’m getting that nearly everyone else here that has played any of the best teams with both higher and low stats has experienced as well.
I very much want this issue fixed not so much because of how much “less rewards” I’m getting or how much “more time” I “have” to spend in PvP (all of my alts are heavily benefiting from the current state of things, in fact), but because it is a huge black mark on the game that is tied in to a core progress incentive. Part of the reason I “don’t bother” with a bunch of kingdom upgrades is because they are economically negative across any relevant stretch of time compared to the immediate cost to grab the things that would grant that star (a bunch of copies of the last invasion troop, etc). Well, many ten stars are economically negative even when I have all the resources right in front of me. So I referain. And thats dumb. Interacting with broken systems like this just feels bad.
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What’s odd is i fully expected it to go down, since i4 killed it the last 2 weeks, completing statues and such. Nope, still 70 per match, pretty much every match.
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Game don’t work. *shrug*
Can you please do a tldr; for your tldr;? 
Not to dismiss the accomplishment by any means. But 1-5 tasks right? Not all of them?
And thanks for the SS.
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i think 4 was the final. so maybe you have to do all 6?
I’ll keep 4 and also quick tier 1, yes please :cheeseeatinggrin:
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I agree. If given the choice between 6 and 5… I’d recommend folks go for 5.
Score based payouts are a problem and matchmaking is broken.
Two uncompleted tasks is a score potential difference of 320 score, which, at key points of the formula (particularly at the very top), can determine the difference between a 50s point payout and a 70 point one.
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Points were weird for me too. One week I was averaging 40 points and the next week it was 60 to 70 points. Nothing changed we completed all tasks within hours of reset like we always do. I can’t check how many points I get now I gave up that account and left the guild. My main account is still 30 to 40 points.
Hopefully this will help with the points problem.
What’s the power rating of your teams (one without hero, one with hero)?
I know a fix is on the way and I should probably just drop it, but the fix didn’t mention matchmaking and didn’t mention gold payouts, which are tied to the same system. So…
The relevant data point isn’t just “I got this many PvP points average at this time and this time I got this many”. It is:
- What is the strongest possible (team score) team you can construct? What was it before?
- What was the opponents team score you were fighting? What was it before?
If 1 didn’t change, you didn’t get “more” points on average. It meant that 2 changed, or in other words, you just got better matchmaking and got served opponents where it was possible for you to earn those points. Your point-earning potential didn’t budge, matchmaking is just obtuse, flighty, and doesn’t serve a system where payouts are based on score differential when matchmaking itself is all over the map on this same score differential. To a degree that it almost seems like RNG is determining your payouts… which I guess is sort of true, since matchmaking has an RNG component and you can’t get good payouts if you aren’t matched with the right opponents, so…
If 1 did increase, and you got the same or better payouts, then your matchmaking didn’t tank enough or you aren’t close enough to the top to get hosed by the calculation.
This is never more obvious to me as when I do parallel PvP runs on two different accounts. The “average” amount I get is based entirely on the whims of matchmaking, its just harder to get good averages when I’m closer to the top, because a larger percentage of things I can get matched with are “bad”.
Heres some a single matchmaking sample from four different accounts, MSPs ranging from 9.8k to 13.3k, levels ranging from 847 to 1314. Go ahead and try to order these based on the account they were matched with, be it in level order or the max score potential of the account:
The issue is really really obvious when you do parallel PvP runs on two accounts at similar levels strengths with one getting good matchmaking. Its not something that will ever be noticed on a beta run on test servers.
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