Idea for a new raid matchmaking system

I’ve heard often complaints about the trophy-based system used to determine matchmaking in PvP raids and I believe it’s deeply flawed. I checked for proposed solutions to see if there was another great mind like mine but apparently not (or my mind isn’t that great).

My idea is simple, replace the current system with something akin to war matchmaking but for individuals, not alliances.

In other words, to determine a Player Score, the game would rate a player on two simple and well-defined concepts:

  1. Roster score.
  2. Raid score.

Roster score, would take an arbitrary number of the best heroes of each player and rate them in some way. I would suggest rate the 10 heroes with the highest power (since power reflects emblems too). Perhaps a better approach would be to expand this number for each tier, something like 5 for Bronze, 10 for Silver, 15 for Gold, 20 for Platinum, and 25 for Diamond since the higher you are, the larger and stronger the roster at your disposal. But let’s keep it a simple 10 for now.

Raid score would simply be a win-loss balance sheet. You get a certain amount of points for a win, and you lose the same amount of points for a loss. I would suggest 100 points here for example.

Arenas would be determined by the overall Player score while ranking could be done either based on Player score (to include the roster score as well, since its a player achievement nonetheless), or based on the Raid score, the person who has more wins than losses compared to the others is by definition the best raider after all.

So to recap, if your 10 strongest heroes are all 4* and through leveling and embleming they average 720 power each, your Roster score is 7200 and since your raid score at this point is zero, your player score is 7200. If you decide to do a PvP raid, the game will match you with another player with a 7200 score (plus minus something tbd later). If you win, your Raid score becomes 100 and next time you will be matched with a 7300 score player. If you lose, your Raid score becomes zero again, and you start all over.

Clearly, the roster score is the determining factor here but skilled players can showcase their talent and take their player score well above their roster score. Which will make rankings even more significant. It’s not just what you have but also how you use it.

As for defenses, my favorite solution is not to score them all. Whether you win or lose on defense, it doesn’t matter, you gain or lose no points at all. While it’s true that creating and positioning a defense is an achievement on its own and should be rewarded, you don’t actually control your defense, the AI does. Not scoring your defensive performance would also end (almost) the much maligned practice of cup-dropping. Not only you won’t lose points by fielding a weak defense, but you will gift points to others and improve their ranking instead. (I said almost because you can still decrease your score by losing raids on purpose, but at least that will come at expense of your own flags, so I’m not sure that’s a wise idea). That said, players would still have a great incentive to field the best defense possible as it would make their attackers lose points and therefore drop in the rankings. And let’s not forget the pleasure and pride of checking on your defense and seeing your defense’s success.

In conclusion, the benefits of this system would be:
A more fair matchmaking.
No cup-dropping.
Focus on offensive heroes instead of defense.
A more fair ranking system
Less stress from incoming attacks (there was a thread about this recently)
A more fair arena placement.

P.S. the only flaw I can see in this proposal, is that older players, or aggressive players will have the advantage of more raids and a better win-loss balance. I’m sure we can find a fix for this. I’m thinking that the Raid score can be limited to the first 12 PvP raid each day only. This way, players who like to flask or buy more flags would gain nothing. Older players would still have the advantage of time but perhaps that’s good since rankings would be considered as a Raiding Hall of fame.

Thank you for your time and patience.

Raids are so unfair, you are not playing the other team, you are playing against computer. If you have built your trophies up high it Won’t let you win, even against a much weaker team. What’s the point of having team power if it means nothing. We have lost a couple of team members because they were fed up with raids. They were tired of losing to much weaker teams, all the time. Raids take the fun out of this game, I don’t blame them for quitting. That will probably be the reason I delete this game, that and getting 3 star hero’s on the highest summons.

Goodbye in advance. Please put your name here: Farewells - MASTER List - Add your favourite past forum great or player who quit [WIKI].

@BigLordF

As flawed as war matchmaking is, I also see flaws in your proposed ideas. For one, raiding is not matchmaking where either team or player has the option to select which enemy to attack, unlike in war that once matchmaking has already been set, there’s no way of selecting other enemy alliance. Secondly, it puts players into a forced category based on the Player Score. I think when playing, it should give players the leeway which raid arena he/she wants to do raiding. And there are a lot of factors that needs to be considered, i.e. opening boards, the heroes maxed and/or emblemed, the troops and their levels, tile play skill or the ability to manipulate tiles for better results, etc.

I had completely forgotten this.

Well, Ultra, first, raiding is matchmaking, even if you have the option to reroll. The game doesn’t randomly assign you an opponent, it tries to match you with someone close to your level. But right now this is based on a system of trophies that can be easily taken advantage of.

Second, I hate cup dropping. I find the practice very unfair and unsportsmanlike towards others. If you field a weak defense because you want to drop from 2,500 trophies to 1,500 and then switch it to a +20 GTV front, you’re giving an unfair advantage to those matched against your defense on your way down, and an unfair disadvantage to those matched against your defense on your way up, plus those you attack on your way up. I honestly find this tactic as borderline bullying since people take advantage of weaker players without regard for consequences. And that was one of the main reasons why I imagined a different matchmaking system.

Awhile back I proposed a new value system for matchmaking and it was pretty much ignored. This definitely well thought out but could use visual data lol. Hope it gets more attention then my ideas.

Here’s one i posted way back aw easy fix

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Well, I think the proposal is pretty straightforward but to simplify it a little, I would define it like this:

"Players are ranked by the Player Score which is the total of the following two separate scores:

  1. Roster score, the sum of the power of the 10 most powerful heroes in the roster.
  2. Raid score, the historical difference between wins and losses on offensive raids."

To avoid cup-dropping I would recommend that Raid Score cannot be a negative number, but even without it, it’s practically impossible for a player to have a negative Raid Score.

So, to offer a visual, imagine Player A and Player B with the following top 10 heroes:

Player A:

Player B

Player A will have a Roster Score of roughly 8800 and Player B will have a Roster Score of roughly 7600.

The current trophy system would allow for these players to be matched against each other if they are within a certain range of trophies, despite their obvious difference in roster power. In the system I propose, the game cannot match these two players because they’re too far off each other, unless their Raid Score can make up for the difference.

So in this case for example, if Player B has a Raid Score roughly 1200 higher than Player A these two players can be matched despite their rosters. But now, Player B is clearly more experienced, has a better mastery of the game such as board manipulations, and a better understanding and use of synergy. Whatever Player B lacks in roster, is replaced by skill and experience so for all purposes, matchmaking these two players now is very fair.

Besides a more fair matchmaking, the proposal would also bring other benefits that I listed in the OP.

Test 3 and 4 would be hard pressed to do enough damage vs 1 and 2. With 20% defense boost you would need the RNG god to smile upon team B. Roughly calculated i see it as 112vs86. What if someone wanted to raid using heroes besides thier top 10? I think part of the fun was the diversity in using different hero combinations. My heroes are all over the place. What raid team would this score be at?

Hopping in here out of maddening frustration with the current Raid matchmaking system. So dumb for it to be based off only the cup score, when they are clearly manipulated. I’ve gone back and forth on cup dropping. I love to win, just like anybody else. I don’t mind a loss, as long as i had a chance. It just sucks to have to sacrifice a million hams to find a team you can stand a chance with. I can either throw all my ham away looking for a fair fight or I can cup drop, so I can have a fun match and look forward to 3 gems and some arrows in my raid chest.

As my heros have gotten stronger and strategy has improved, I’ve become a bit more bold to take on teams a hundred points more powerful than mine, but then I see that I’ll win 4 cups if I win or lose 50. Really? They’re obviously cup dropping, which makes me want to cup drop, which makes other people want to cup drop. it’s broken. please fix it.

Maybe the cup score is low because they don’t have a great strategy. doesn’t matter on defense, because the computer plays for you, so it’s all about team power and RNG. Make the match, based on the power of the defense against the player’s roster of heros. I like the idea of score playing a role, because it measures your strategy, but it doesn’t matter how good you are, a 3800 team will have a hard time not getting smoked by a 4600 team.

I have full raid energy and just spent 100k ham in re-rolls and couldn’t find anybody less than 500 power above my best team. Why would i want to do that? you wouldn’t even learn anything and it’s obviously no fun for your best heros to not even make a dent in the defense team. and don’t even get me started on the crappy boards and ■■■■■■ mana generation shenanigans. (I swear they are applying hidden boosters to the defense team).

ugh… guess I’ll go back to auto-farming, so i can feed more recruits to my TC’s and get more heros to trickle feed to my other heroes that aren’t at a mat wall.

it would be nice if you had a better way to practice with new heroes. Sure, you can use them on map levels to test out synergy with other heroes, but map stage strategy is very different from raid / war strategy.

I like the idea of choosing which arena to compete in, but even better… vanilla mode! compete against other teams with JUST base stats. what a great way to try out new heroes!