"New" alliances in war must be resolved

This will be the third consecutive war that we will face an alliance of mostly “newer” members. Of course the teams on paper look stronger than our teams, and most likely are. They are matched against us because they are exploiting a loophole in war matchmaking that favors newer alliances. I’m asking SG to address this again, as it is ruining War for those of us in Alliances that aren’t shuffling every two weeks just to keep our war score down. Sorry, but nothing fair about being matched against much stronger opponents, simply because they decided to break up and re-form under another name.

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Sounds like you’re too old for this.

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Touche! LOL

20 characters here

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Imma link you to this thread cause it’s the same thing in principle:

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These are similar, but they are discrepancies. The other one is asking about matchmaking noting a discrepancy when facing someone using the shuffle strategy. This post is asking for a resolution to stop that from being allowed.

I think the link is good and there’s good information there, but they are slightly different.

Heck, @TooOldForThis even participated in your linked thread :slight_smile:

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War score shouldn’t change after victories, losses or due to other exploitable things. It should simply be calculated based on the participating rosters.

The match itself should be chosen randomly by rng from all possible opponents.

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And raid score should only depend on player roster to prevent cup dropping?

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This should be highlighted and studied by the staff.
Your thought is what my alliance and i think about war and we cannot understand why that is not enough to do the matchmaking.

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Forming new alliances just to outsmart the matchmaking algorithm seems a little bit unfair. Cup dropping only is a dumb strategy.

You shouldn’t compare scoring goals and putting wider goals on the soccer field.

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Some folks have come to the conclusion that opening war chests faster using ‘The Alliance Shuffle’ is a better way to obtain loot compared to fighting as a steady alliance and taking down titans. Remember, by shuffling, they are at most getting to 5-6* titans by the time they need to move on along to the next moniker. If the loot drop rates are truly higher by using The Alliance Shuffle, then it’s partially the fault of the devs for making this behavior more profitable. Consequently, one way to limit it would be to boost titan loot drop rates at higher star levels, thereby decreasing the incentive to shuffle.

It’s probably quite a bit of work to do this for a 30 person alliance, or you keep the group small. While I think it’s ingenious to do if they are correct about the loot drops, it does degrade the level of play for others. A more causal alliance may hover at win-bonus of 0, and they get matched with this group of folks in a ‘new’ alliance with a win-bonus of 0 as well. However, if they stayed in one alliance, they might hover around a win-bonus of +10. An obvious mismatch that was intended to happen by the ‘new’ alliance. One way to alleviate the source of the mismatch could be to calculate the ‘win-bonus’ differently in the first 5 wars. Instead of the first win moving you to +1, maybe it moves you to +6. An easy way to code it would be to make the first 5 wars worth (6,5,4,3,2) respectively. So a new alliance with a 2-0 record would be at +11 instead of +2 and would face tougher opponents.

Of course, that doesn’t stop them from having alts save a series of 3 or so alliances they rotate into. The ‘newness’ of the alliance isn’t the problem; it is the shift in power. You could apply the above effect any time the war score is increased or decreased by a significant margin (I have no data on that, so it’s a value the devs would have to work out).

There are folks on the forum that have championed the shuffling strategy, so I have no doubt that it works. On one hand, I give them kudos for figuring it out (if they are correct) and having the diligence to carry out the necessary steps. On the other hand, they are damaging the concept of fair play by exploiting the matchmaking algorithm, which I consider to be ethically troubling since it comes at the expense of another alliance.

Edit: Added suggestion to edit win-bonus any time the base War Score is changed by a ‘significant’ amount

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FWIW and why there may be other factors at play:

A bunch of us are in the middle of a merge. About 8 or 9 of us (I’ve lost track at the moment) are at a new home.

I’m sure, if they care, our opposition may be wondering why half the war field is in the alliance less than a day.

The truth is simple: there’s only a couple of days to move before you get locked out of war, so it has to happen fast. War ended Thursday morning. We started moving Thursday night. Matchmaking is Friday afternoon.

So while I don’t doubt that some alliances may be playing the shuffle, I do think it’s as plausible that there are merges/movements happening and nothing more nefarious than that (and yes, it can happen that an entire alliance forms overnight; a former member joined one that did that where 20 some players joined on the same day from different alliances because people talk to other people on social media and stuff happens).

Now, should it affect war score in favor of one side? No, but thats a Dev issue, and probably not a high priority for them.

Sucks, but I think it’s important that we consider all the reasons why you may see that happen.

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That would be a matchmaking nightmare and would lead to far more complaints

Right now there is a possible solution in place but hard to determine the outcome

What devs have done is increased win cap to 20 instead of 10

Which gives alliances that win more consistenly a bigger gap between themselves and newly formed alliances starting at 0

Ideal solution? Probly not since these complaints continue and the “war shuffle” continues to be exploited

1 thing they could do is separate depth score and performance score

Match depth first, performance 2nd which they kind of do that now but with the way it’s currently done it leaves more room for error and exploits due to alliances figuring out how to drop to lower brackets than they belong(and not positive separating the 2 would fix the issue honestly but it’s just somethin to try)

Something else they could do

Alter chest points to a system where the value depends on the opponent(which would also change pretty much the way current system works either by total points increased to fill a chest or by changing the system to %s instead of whole points)

An alliance with a depth score of say 15k facing an alliance with a depth score of 30k(matched with the 15k by resetting their performance score)

For the 15k, a war win would be worth
10 points

For the 30k, a war win would be worth 2 points

This shift would discourage the current practices and exploits without damaging those trying to war the way the devs intended

And the points would even themselves out the closer depth points are so the further up the ladder you go the even the points get for both sides

As long as the matchmaking system would go in this order:
Depth
Number of members
Performance
(Which i think it does that now kind of but not exactly since depth&performance are still 1 score)

The brackets would start working themselves out into more even matchmaking at the bottom and even do away with the current exploit even top alliances are using by dropping a member or 2 to play king of the mountain in brackets they don’t belong in

Just my 2 cents and a really rough draft that is probably heavily flawed but I’m sure if i didnt have a day job and just got paid to figure out better systems for a video game, i could probly iron out the pitfalls(not saying it’s an idea worth being paid for or that i would ever expect such a thing, just sayin I’m sure SG could pick somebody out of their employee pool and give em the task of fixing war matching and focus on nothing else, eventually the issues would be solved)5

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how much?
20 times stronger?

I actually like the idea raised via loot you can discourage the practice .
added bonus / % Of higher tier loot longer an individual has remained in alliance
Tier 1 1 month
Tier 2 2 months
Tier 3 3 months
Tier 4 6 months

That way titan chest and war chest provided greater rewards for those not hopping and would discourage practice starting and closing alliances to game system

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I probably was (and still are) one of the first discovering this strategy and take advantage of that.

I’m not particulary proud of bullying people obviously weaker then me, but it was pretty much the game drove me into this corner to still somewhat enjoy the competition on other events.

I would probably left awhile ago without that.

Miss too many heroes to be somewhat competitive in a strong alliance for titans and wars, and i kinda dislike mediocrity and teammates brugging about their shiny new hero.

So here i am, no hard feelings on those who i literally destroy in war.

Punish me (or whoever do this strategy) would mean punish even those alliances that really are new, and people that really could face their first war.

Obviously Small Giant don’t want to discourage those people and make them flee.
So i kinda understand why they “tolerate” this behavior.

I don’t think you gonna face those alliances all the time.
Their number is still too low to be a real problem most of the time.

Considering what they did to mercing, i expect sooner or later they gonna take action even on this.

My wish is that it never happen.

While i understand your frustration, you should understand there’s some people that actually enjoy playing like this and do not want to be forced (again) to play as all the others play.

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Would miss those telling us they haven’t lost a war since 2018 :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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You know all those people will achieve with this behaviour ? The SG resolution of nerfing war loot.

Why not play fairly and avoiding this kind of back doors in Game

I Hope they dont Nerf war loot, instead they should attack directly to the problem . How ? Making a system with tiers like titan . This tier will work ascending as long as alliance open war chest ( to reach the max level , i dont know, for example , iv war loot tier )

This system will stop those people to ruin wars for a greedy ambition of unfair progression

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It would make other exploits more effective

So, what percent drop in war points do you see when you swap?