Matchmaking Problems!

Can you summarize how you think the current system can be manipulated by the players?

Based on a quick look, the one explanation I can think of is that you’ve won most of your wars and they have lost most of theirs. It’s possible that the new algorithm gives too much weight to that. We’ll keep an eye on things and adjust as needed.

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Thanks - I’ll loop back once the war is done with a debrief.

Are you taking all previous wars into account? It would be better to use just the last N wars. Maybe try with N=5?

As an example of why using all wars is wrong: I was in an alliance that won their first 22 wars. For the next 10-12 they won about 45% of the wars. Then I left, it was maybe two weeks ago. If you use all wars they’d have tougher opponents, even though they’d stopped being victorious a long time ago.

until this war the most common practice was hero switch on defense team and lower score. for example we met a lot of teams with players over level 40 that had 1 star heroes on the defense. From their titan score it was clear they had a lot of power but the cup score was very low.

If an alliance like ours that has under 200 days is matched with a team with over 20 players over lvl 38 is clearly a problem. those players that had 1 star heroes took out all our alliance in under 1 hour. fun right?

I’m sure you know about this problem, and if not that is even a bigger problem…

I don’t want to get a lower power alliance in the wars just i don’t want to have NO CHANCE because of a cheat.

This practice has nothing to do with matchmaking.

Matchmaking is not based on any particular hero selection to particular teams (defense, war defense, etc.). It never has been.

Quick refresher on how war matching is done:

  1. For each alliance member who has not opted out, sum the Power of the top 30 heroes and top 5 troops. Weight the top 5 heroes more heavily.

  2. Sum the result across all the participating members to get a “Match Score”.

  3. speculation: Modify Match Score by a factor related to your recent win:loss record

  4. Pair up alliances by modified Match Score, with the caveat that the number of participating members must be within 3 of each other.

So if you have 25 members, all participating, you can be paired up with a 30 member alliance with several opt-outs. If those opt-outs are some of the big hitters, that can shift the results a lot.

There are two ways to manipulate this scoring, neither of them good:

  1. Lose wars to get easier war targets so you can win. But why?
  2. Feed away high-point but low-value heroes in your deck. E.g., eat that 2/60 Thorne you now realize you’ll never give capes to. This has real consequences, though, so it’s not abusive.

Until you actually go in and fight, you won’t know if it’s a poor match. You may be up against an alliance that loves raiding but has low war participation. Or they do stupid things like setting 1* defenses on half their members, giving you lots of cheap points. (Hint: just take those out repeatedly using your worst heroes, leave all the big guys until you’ve reset the little guys as often as possible, then take out the big guys.) In any case, you might surprise yourself.

Basic war strategy:

  1. Set your strongest defenses.
  2. If your alliance has the depth, agree on a common tank color
  3. Use all your war hits.
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Thought this was supposed to be fixed! Save your algorithms and “up your troops” speeches…

If we presume either all troops are maxed or all troops are lv 1 the power disparity still exists.

Stopping all recurring payment. Not buying anything more.

This needs to be fixed!

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Put down your pitch fork. Read the post above yours.

Then remember how you have no idea how many people are participating. You don’t know their hero depth. You don’t know their win/loss streak or their participation.

Save your judgements until after the war. If you win, great! Hopefully it was a close match and you won because of your good plays and strategy.
If you lose, bummer! Hopefully it was a close match, you find your faults and remember that your next war will take this loss into consideration.

Good luck!

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as most of us said above, we will comeback with info after the war. @2Spookd good luck to you too! :+1:

I can’t check all of these reports, but this is again the case where Canadian True has been winning a lot and © LUPII NEGRI © has been losing a lot. Let’s see how the wars go - we’ll probably lower the effect of war history slightly for the next war.

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Kerridoc, you are awesome. :slight_smile:

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I just thought of a third way to “play” the scoring system:

  1. The big hitter(s) opt out, giving their junior mates an easier war and fill the war chest more quickly. Suppose, for example, I started a training alliance for 7D, so it was me (with half of my war heroes 5*, the other full 4*) and 29 newish players using a mix of 3* and 4*. My high team will skew us to face alliances with the same average team but a higher median. That is, most of the matches will be badly skewed: I can one-shot 6 targets, but all the other wins will be a struggle. If I opt out of the war and spend the day coaching my mates, then they’ll be paired against similar teams and have a fairer fight. This strategy isn’t abusive at all – I’m earning fewer rare mats in this example.
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That would actually be a really nice thing to do. But knowing you not a problem at all as you have always given knowledge willingly
As for all the we have been badly matched we will be slaughtered comment from everyone. I would echo other comments go into any conflict thinking you will lose and you will. Give each AW match the same chance and you may even realise you are way better than you think. Alliance score means nothing but the hard work you put in lvling your bench will prevail and lead to victory.
Remeber all AW’s are a team effort not for personal score

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Just a thought, I think the current consideration of war history is a nice way of favoring those alliances that have been getting the short end of the stick mostly or exclusively, in the time before this change. They deserve a couple wins… and then things should even out as the war histories change. I can’t see all the variables and there are all alliances to consider obviously, but to me this feels more good than bad.

And full disclosure, in my alliances we’ve gotten some good matches (or at least ones we managed to win, sometimes even when it looked like we wouldn’t), but mostly ones that looked either a little or a lot stacked against us. Mostly because we have a fairly large difference between the top end and bottom end I think (and no doubt many unleveled/partially leveled 4*/5* among all of us). This war, I breathe a sigh of relief because our opponent has a lot more targets that our alliance’s weaker members can decently attack and beat on their own, which before this tended to be slim to none at all. Honestly I admire their grit and fighting spirit all this time.

So definitely for us, the new matching method promises to be a nice improvement based on this early first impression (we still have to actually fight the war of course!).

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Ours looks better as well - more teams that our weaker teams will be able to tackle. We will see how it goes.

I have a very different opinion. :slight_smile: I think using the war history is cheating. It would be possible (for competent developers) to develop good matching that takes into account only the heroes and troops. Adding war history removes the skill/strategy alliances might have been employing. Now the message is: if you’re good – we’ll make you lose (unless you’re #1 alliance); if you’re bad – well then we’ll find someone you can win against.

No, the message is, “If you’re good, we’ll match you with other good alliances. If you’re not, we’ll match you with other struggling alliances.”
Personally, I would rather have a good match against another alliance that is around our ability, one that is close and goes down to the wire. Blowouts aren’t much fun, no matter which side you’re on.

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I agree with them on this the system matching making sucks, the last 3 wars we have been overpowered the other team has all heavy hitters, lvls in the 28+ their teams power is 3000+ most of my alliance isn’t no where near that. Also it’s not just war, the raid match ups are just as bad lately. Surely u programmers can fix this, so fix it. Yes I’m a little upset but being over the age of 50 affords me that itty bitty right.

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Nah, you’re confused.

…and if you still win, we’ll match you against alliances you can’t possibly win.

…and if you still lose, we’ll match you against ever weaker alliances until you win.

So what do you actually want? If you want even matches against roughly equal opponents, this will do it. If you want to steamroll every alliance you face, sorry about your luck.

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