[Primer] How come the leaders in the tournament have so many more points than me? or tournament seeding, time zones, and Elo rating deflation

[Gryphonknight]

Subject
[Primer] How come the leaders in the tournament have so many more points than me? or tournament seeding, time zones, and Elo rating deflation

Day One Attack

Your day one matches are based on your highest Team power 5x eligible heroes ( TP seed ).

And the higher the team power of the defense teams you fight, the more laurels ( points ) a win is worth.

So if your 5 highest ELIGIBLE heroes are 5x 4* 3.60 you cannot get as many laurels ( points ) as a player with 5x 4*+20 heroes, with maximum costumes and 3* level 20 troops.

This is true even if you do not use any of your highest Team power 5x eligible heroes ( looking at you TP 755 Vivica in Bloody battle).

Day Two Attack

After day one, attack matchmaking is based on your current laurels ( points ).

This allows all time zones to use their Day One energy facing the same ( good or bad ) matchmaking.

Attacks Starting Behind

But if you have 5x wins and someone else has 5x wins, if they started day one fighting higher laurel ( point ) teams then their wins will be worth more laurels ( points) than yours.

This encourages X*+20 heroes with maximum troops, maximum costumes, and other Team power boosts.

Day One Defense

Your defense points are roughly based on how good your defense is, compared to you TP seed.

If your TP seed is 3200, and your defense is Team power 1500, you will still start Day one fighting attacking teams with Team Power 2600 to 3800. Not good for your Team power 1500 defense team.

This is due to rule bending ( see notes on 2x Hero 3x empty slot defense teams ). Because. Humans.

This is designed to encourage good X*+20 defense team heroes with maximum troops, maximum costumes, and other Team power boosts.

Day Two Defense

After day one, defense matchmaking is based on your current laurels ( points ).

This allows all time zones to use their Day One energy facing the same ( good or bad ) matchmaking.

Elo rating deflation

With the removal of 1* / 2* tournaments, the, 3* / 4* / 5* tournaments have content locked behind ever increasing grinding, ever more restrictive RNG paywalls, ever more expensive micro transactions, and limited time paywalls.

For new, and old players, this leads to ever increasing Elo rating deflation ( see notes ) as more and more content necessary to compete in tournaments is locked away. And content not locked away takes ever increasing amount of grinding.

The is one of the consequences of Merciless RNG.

If tournaments were more frequent, players could specialize ( example 3* Rush attack ), but fewer tournaments encourage spending on all rarity of heroes, costumes and troops increasing revenue.

Notes

Click for notes

Tournament Defense

Improvements and changes:

• Further improvements to the distribution of attacks, especially for the top players.
• Keep in mind that if you’re in the top, your defense team will receive more attacks. This is due to the fact that there is a small number of top defense teams that are good matches for a large number of top attackers. We try to prioritize choosing a good opponent over choosing a too easy or too difficult opponent that hasn’t been attacked as much. We have also implemented a limit on how attacks count towards your Defense Grade. After the first five attacks of the day, only one attack per hour counts towards the grade.

• Changes to the starting difficulty of opponents your defense team faces.
• It is no longer based on the defense team you pick, but your best heroes that match the tournament requirements. We’ve brought this rule back because we want to encourage players to choose the best defense team they can, and thus provide a better challenge to their opponents. Due to the way the Team Power is calculated it was possible, for example, to pick a defense team of two fully leveled, fully ascended heroes that were on paper equal in Team Power with a full team of lower rarity heroes, but in practice that full team would be defeated in most cases.

(https://support.smallgiantgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021372273-Raid-Tournament-Change-Log)

Elo rating deflation

@Gryphonknight

For example when the Devs added the Barracks, players that did nothing lost Elo rating and those who maxed out their troops the fastest got (temporarily) a large increase in Elo rating.

This creates a temporary race to see who can max out the new advantage first. But eventually it will settles down as all players gain the new advantage. New players will have something else they need to increase their rating. So new player Elo ratings will tend to be lower, and increasing their rating will take longer than before the change.

@Gryphonknight

Adding Giraffe/ human hybrids can increase height. If the Giraffe/ human hybrid is 8 feet tall and 3000 trophies, 4 feet players will drop to 1500 trophies. This is the rumored class system ( skill tree/ hero buff) creating Elo based rating deflation. The rumored class system will allow players to fight 15* Titans with the increased defense, HP and attack required.

Zombie accounts are simply adding the height of dead players to the distribution.

@Gryphonknight

New words

Every time new words, or languages, are added to the World’s Bloodiest Spelling Bee, it will be a race for players to add the new to their Blood Dictionary and figure out it basic rules of spelling and trap words.

Players without updated Blood Dictionaries will find a drop in rating and new players will have to spend more time improving their Blood Dictionary to reach the same rating.

This is Elo based rating deflation.

1* / 2* Tournaments

@Gryphonknight

Devs have added a trickle of 3* heroes to gem summons because they discovered players will spend gems to pull Melia, Hisan, Rudolph, etc.

This generates money for SGG.

Activities for 1* / 2* heroes do not generate money for SGG.

In the end, this is a business.

will be a disappointment to some of you, especially if you have spent emblems on your 1* and 2* heroes. For those you, I apologize

(Raid Tournaments Change: 1-Star and 2-Star Tournaments Removed)

Power Creep/ content updates

Power creep/ content updates is actually health for a game.

This is called new things to do.

It means new things are added ( emblems, costumes, 3* heroes, etc. ). But new things result in Elo rating deflation.

Bad Power Creep

But the actual term “Power creep” is usually used for content updates done poorly, adding excessive grinding, micro transactions, or both which can often result in rampant, and often run away, Elo rating deflation with each month ( keeping a VERY close eye on you HotM and Valor Pass).

(Analysis of Power Creep of Hero Stats - Long Read Warning)

See also

(Raid Tournament Scoring Guide)

FIN

[DaveCozy]

@Gryphonknight

If tournaments were more frequent, players could specialize ( example 3* Rush attack ), but fewer tournaments encourage spending on all rarity of heroes, costumes and troops increasing revenue.

So it’s roughly been 1 year + 4 months since the first raid tournament (back when the loot was better) and since I’ve chosen to specialize on 3* rarity myself. I have what I think is a pretty deep roster in this rarity, heroes loaded with emblems and at least 2 troops of each color in 2* rarity above level 8. I went all in for this rarity basically.

Now personally, I only decided to emblem them for fun, same with leveling 2* troops. I just wanted to do well in this format regardless of how well I would do in other formats or if my other team strengths would fall behind (I seem to still do ok, but it’s noticeable that my 4* and 5* teams are weaker than other players at my level).

Since I mostly emblemed my 3*s to do well, I was curious to see if I was getting some sort of profit after the question had been posed here: Crew-Saders! - #199 by DaveCozy I noted that with RNG, I had just broken even by winning more than 230 emblems (in general, not in one specific class) for one of my 3*s. That’s about the amount of emblems needed to take a 3* to +20.

So after a year you can essentially expect recover enough emblems for just one 3* that is maxed. Assuming you place in top 1% all the time. Note too that I also have several troops at level 15 in 2* rarity.

Now I also noted that some of the loot I won was with the initially nerfed tournament loot as of the 2nd tournament – so the wait time might be a little faster in the future.

–

All the above brings me to this point though:

It’s no accident that 3* tournaments are least frequent format. The devs clearly don’t want players to profit off them, or at least if they’re going to profit they want to make sure it takes time to do so.

I’m not really complaining since I never really emblemed them to make a profit. I only did it for fun. And I understand where they are coming from too, since you don’t have to really spend much money or grind away a lot to get good teams of 3* heroes maxed and emblemed.

It also explains why the loot was heavily nerfed at first. If players in 3* tournaments were winning 100 emblems via RNG, that would more than make up for the time and resources spent embleming 3*s. They made sure to make the time spent profiting for 3*s much, much longer.

–

Due to all this. I’ve chosen to only emblem two 3*s per class to +18 ~ +20 (except Paladin, where I couldn’t choose between Ei-Dunn, Gunnar and Tyrum, so I did all of them).

Given that I make proper choices, my depth should be sufficient to have fun in all 3* tournaments that come, while still maintaining a competitive defense.

Edit: my 17 3* that have emblems below (will make it 18 if I get Agnes, maybe 19 if I get Isshtak’s costume). 3* tournament weeks, are my favorite weeks. They make me enjoy the game.

[Gryphonknight]

@DaveCozy

So it’s roughly been 1 year + 4 months since the first raid tournament (back when the loot was better) and since I’ve chosen to specialize on 3* rarity myself.

Very nice write up.

@DaveCozy

It’s no accident that 3* tournaments are least frequent format

I agree.

I would much prefer if they ran multiple formats per week.

(Increase emblem drops or 1x Free and 1x 75g Tourney or Run five tourneys- 5* to 1*- EVERY week or still bitter about 1*+20 heroes)

[Txapos]

Hello! I’ve been reading the forum since i started playing (around 3 months ago), but this is the first time i feel the need to post something.
BTW, i found the forum extra useful, i hope to participate more.

So, the thing is i have this defense team for tourney:

(Dont mind the trophies, i hover around 1500, but i just used a flask to prove myself if i could go up to platinum, and chest rewards were awful lol)

Well, the point is i just played ONE match so far (win), and had 3 defenses. The last 2 defenses were a loss and i think my matchups were kinda unfair… I mean, they have +300 power and i have only 530 tourney points from my only win.

This were my opponents:

Any thoughts? Do you think this matchups were fair?

PS: sorry about grammar, english is not my mother tongue.

[Boguebob]

hey txapos, welcome to the forum. neither i am English and i just resurrected from a deep nap so my apologies for the language.
The matchup in mondays is a little wonky, and is takes in account all your available heroes for the week rule. I see you have a nearly maxed wu kong and rigard, i bet there is the problem.
enjoy the game and feel free to ask anything, there are a bunch of helpful fellas around.

[DaveCozy]

@Boguebob

I see you have a nearly maxed wu kong and rigard

Yep, specifically the issue is nearly maxed Rigard.

Tournament matchups take into account your top heroes and troops. Yes, that even includes healers in Bloody Battle.

–

@Txapos

Any thoughts? Do you think this matchups were fair?

I moved your question to the guide that explains tournament matchmaking. I’ll highlight this part:

@Gryphonknight

Day One Attack

Your day one matches are based on your highest Team power 5x eligible heroes ( TP seed ).

And the higher the team power of the defense teams you fight, the more laurels ( points ) a win is worth.

So if your 5 highest ELIGIBLE heroes are 5x 4* 3.60 you cannot get as many laurels ( points ) as a player with 5x 4*+20 heroes, with maximum costumes and 3* level 20 troops.

This is true even if you do not use any of your highest Team power 5x eligible heroes ( looking at you TP 755 Vivica in Bloody battle).

[Txapos]

Thanks!! I Will have a good look at that

[Polentinha]

Awesome content, but the boards are going to decide everything at the end, mostly. The matching is not fair sometimes too. Usually I have to face 5 5*+20 and I am not at that level, even youtube whale players are getting weaker opponents.

[Dudeious.Maximus]

I do feel the jump is too big sometimes lll go 5-0 monday as I know I’ll get high emblems the next day. I’ll leave Tuesday ill see how I do Wednesday if I lose two I stop, ill leave Thursday and see what I can do Friday. My score will be higher then it would be if I battled each day.

[Polentinha]

I feel you… did not even mentioned the strong as God players eating my defence like the game were giving them some pieces of cake to eat.

[Ballrash]

@Gryphonknight

After day one, defense matchmaking is based on your current laurels ( points ).

Can someone confirm that this is outdated information? I am skeptical it’s still relevant. I recently didn’t use my Monday or Tuesday attacks in the tourney. On Wednesday I had 0 offensive points plus whatever a C and a B on defense gets you. Not much at all right? Bottom 25% obviously. Funny thing is that I was attacked more than 30 times already by Wednesday morning. With the you’ve been attacked over 30 times message and 15 or more attacks still up from Tuesday.

So if you defense gets matched on Day 2 based on your points in the tournament, my defense should have gotten worse attacking teams based on the quote above. (My defense was all +20 red 4* heroes with Lvl 75 Willy tank btw.) And it continued to get attacked a bunch throughout the tourney. With 13 wins between Wednesday and Friday I eeked out the top 25%. With tons of attacks, my D ended up as a C, ~47%.

I am trying to figure out the game’s defense matchmaking algorithm. Everything I’m finding around here and in the “Change Log” seems super outdated and doesn’t jive with my experience in the game as well as reports with a good friend who we feed our data off one another. As you can see in my situation above, it’s hard to see how “day 2 defense matchmaking is based on my current points.” Am I reading that wrong? I love to get someone else’s take.

Furthermore, it seems that most of the time when my defense gets A or B it is due in part to a small number of attacks, on the order of 5 to 8 total for the tourney. In a heavy RNG game, when your defense gets attacked many times, like for instance this last tourney where I had probably 60 to 70 attacks, it regresses towards a mean. In some cases it’s 47% for a C or sometimes it’s 51% if I’m lucky.

Anyways, if someone could throw up a link to relevant information that isn’t 2 years old on how the algorithm matches your defense with opponents, that would be great. OR, if you figured out how to keep attacks down on your tourney defense please share if you’re willing.