The history of alliance wars matchmaking hasn’t shed the best light on the company, the first correction was a step in the right direction. Although that was the case fluctuation of titan score made it unreliable and a new method was necessary. Measuring the top 30 hero power of each member and adding the count of members definitely was also a step in the right direction…
However I hate to put it bluntly - it was done in the way that requires the least amount of effort. It’s clear by my current alliances matching, that hero power was turned into a single metric and averaged out. We have such a variance of players in my training alliance that while 5 of our defense teams (ie best heroes) are worth over 90 points total, several teams are worth less than 40 total. Our opponents have one team on their defense at 104 points total, and every other team is so similar in strength that they are each worth 65 to 75 points.
I’m not saying this is unfair or unbalanced, it is going to work out interesting though to say the least. All I’m saying is you should take what you learned from raid arenas… Tier the matchings by the hero power of individual members.
If my top 30 hero power is between 15000 and 20000 I should be a platinum member, between 12000 and 15000 a gold member, between 8000 and 12000 a silver member. Then match your alliance for wars based on the number of members an alliance has in each tier. That will give you more accurate matchings than the across the board average you’ve gone with…
Ps, I pulled those power ranges out of thin air, feel free to discuss that matter in more detail.
I agree that every matchmaking change has been an improvement. The first system of alliance rank was not great, and the Titan score was a better indicator. This was flawed in that Titan performance is not necessarily the best predictor of war strength and average team power is probably better.
However, while good for the top alliances this system also has flaws in the measurement of average and smaller rosters.
Your system would work better for the lower power alliances, but it would group the to alliances all together in one tier that would likely upset the game’s biggest financial supporters. There is no ideal measurement of war performance other than historic war performance.
I still think the raid ELO system would work best in the long term. Maybe this is harder to implement? I can’t understand why this idea was not adopted and can only assume it’s too much work for a development team that is currently working on season 2 and another challenge event.
Except the elo systems I keep reading about on the forums just don’t seem like flexible methods. Let me elaborate :
There are clear tiers with my suggestion, ranking members into (for example) silver, gold, platinum, diamond, etc if necessary tiers.
Then, there is an unseen tier. This is the inactive tier where members of an alliance not yet level 12 (whom can’t participate) are categorized. Thus an alliance of 30 people with 2 inactive are pitted not against another 30 players but against 28… Because only 28 defense teams will be active in either side.
Then, if they ever decide to listen to the people on the forum, enabling a setting in the account to not participate would also allow for someone to not be counted against their alliance. They would be a spectator once prep phase started unless turning this option off before matching, so no abuse of the system could take place. So now an alliance of 30 with two people under level 12 that has a couple go on vacation - ie only 26 participants - gets matched against an alliance that also has 26 active members.
Basically, basing matchmaking on performances alone only helps those elite spenders you mentioned. My suggestion actually ensures a fair match takes place no matter the circumstances because it takes into consideration factors that performance alone cannot.
Yeah it would be a fair amount of work, but that’s why developing games is a job. That’s why they have an income is because we don’t expect just another simple average or already available statistic. They need to put effort into a matchmaking process to make it functional because so far that’s the common problem with the three options we’ve been given… None of them took more than 20 minutes of thought to proceed with it.
Better options are out there, they just need to choose one and pursue it to completion.
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The wars have been a divisive issue. Many like it, many do not. The lack of an opt out alternative , lack of content (second map), the nerfing of basic materials for simple crafts are driving many away, specially the old timers that stuck to the game from the start. The supertitans are nothing the vast majority can look forward to in the near future. So we get stuck with the boredom of farming, the boredom of raids, even boredom of same new rare quests and events, and nothing to look forward to when logging in. Many are even wondering why the trouble of trying to level up heroes - specially those that dislike wars.
SG should really take note that games are supposed to be fun, and not an obligation or drudgery
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