Serious matching problem with alliance wars

There are 3 large problems with this model that will still lead to mismatches:

  1. Total power of heroes is a truly terrible indicator of the effectiveness of those heroes in a war setting. The biggest issue is that the star level of a hero comes with a total power bonus that FAR exceeds its value until the 5* are fully ascended. This could potentially be corrected for. However other issues such as varying special skills having more or less value in a war setting (often dramatically - Alby Vs. Horghall anyone?).

  2. It does not take warring skill into account. Things like good hero development strategy, good team selection, good gem play, etc. will leave some alliance perpetually behind. Maybe this is ‘fair’ in the sense that good teams will beat bad ones. But it sure sucks for those bad teams. It will always feel like they were screwed by the match-ups.

  3. Most importantly, it is not self correcting. Teams that end up on the short end of the stick of this system (because of the factors above) will almost always lose.

I hope we end with a ladder based system where teams have a war score that is a sum total of individual player’s war scores on the team. War scores could be calculated as a combination of hero strength, individual war performance and team war performance. It could be a hidden metric or a visible one although I’d prefer hidden so you don’t introduce the concept of individuals choosing self-interested tactics in war.

All that said, it’s not as easy as just putting that in place. There are a number of undefined pieces that would need to be ironed out. SG is making the plans. I am choosing to go along for the ride.

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I kind of agree with you for #1. I can say with my mid-leveled 5 stars, the power rating seems about right based on success in raids. I totally agree with the “not all powers are equivalent” statement, but again broadly it works. And in statistics its all about working broadly, not in specifics.

#2 as you say, is the point of wars. line up two teams that are close to equivalent and let the team with the superior individual players or group tactics win. I don’t think participation prizes are a good thing.

I like you addition for #3, I would do it a bit differently, but as they start to gather enough data to make statistical statements about certain hero’s or combo of hero’s having a strong correlation to beating the odd, they can tweak the algorithm. That would be a very nice refinement indeed.

Um… yes? No? I’m not sure?

What “primary stated goal” do you think it is that the code does not meet? Are we supposed to guess?

Hint. Look at subject line.

So what’s the “problem”?

That’s a smart and sensible process. I don’t think it’s likely to reduce the number of alliance war mismatches - I suspect it would actually increase the number of mismatches.

Please elaborate on why an increase. It works in college football.

Step 1. Tallying the number of players at level 12 would have some effect, I’m sure, for beginner alliances, but only for them. I suspect most alliances will have all players well beyond level 12. (I might be wrong about this - I can’t see the data.) We might just as sensibly tally the number of players in each alliance at level 20, or level 30 - or maybe I’m erring int he wrong direction, and we should tally players past level 5. It’s all arbitrary and unlikely to be any use outside a small subset of alliances.

Step 2. Using Top 5 Power as a proxy for player strength is not an awful idea. I personally prefer it to Top 30. But it should definitively produce more uneven matches, because it is specifically pairing players with roughly even defences, but radically different benches. (Evenly matched benches will sometimes occur, but under the process you describe, they will be freak occurrences - rare flukes.) The outcome of these wars will always be that the stronger benches win. (I don’t think this is a bad thing entirely, but it won’t make mismatches less common.)

Step 3. To say “match the teams within these groups” is to avoid answering the question: How? If I knew how to do it in such a way as to avoid mismatches, then I would post the explanation here to prove how clever I was. I suspect others would, too, for more selfless reasons. How to match teams is the essence of the problem and your method doesn’t address it at all.

So your suggestions are perfectly logical and sensible, but they fail to address the essence of the problem - how to match alliances - and don’t seem in any way to decrease the likelihood of mismatches. E&P certainly is not college football, though it’s worth noting that that sport is famous for mismatches.

The level 12 is the starting point for eligibility for playing in the war. That is where you start counting the number of eligible war players. All the way to level 60 or whatever is the highest level attainable or hasn’t been attained.

If two alliance have equal amount of eligible (level 12 and above) players, all top 5 heroes’ power of every player is added up, and the totals are near equal between the two alliances, then that should be pretty equal teams. These numbers change and so would the matchups. The depth of players will be pretty equal as well. Sure there are those that got lucky and have a few five stars and then mostly threes. But most of us have have a 30 hero roster that is top heavy but very close on down.

Well a new update is coming so we’ll see if it’s fixed. They probably wouldn’t take our advice even if we wrote the code out for them.

Also, have you ever seen Div I play Div II or Div III teams in football? Even Div I is divided into two; FBS and FCS. Then they are divided by conferences as well. The matchups within conferences was what I was referring to. Two teams ranked 7 and 8 nationally and are in the same conference are usually good hard fought games.

I think the attraction of these types of ‘fixes’ is that it will reduce the number of matches that LOOK like mismatches during war prep. People continue to complain about the matchmaking before a war happens by comparing things like:

  • Alliance scores
  • Titan scores
  • Number of defense teams above score X compared to other teams

Because people feel they ‘know’ the war will be an upset before fighting it, they lean towards ‘solutions’ that will affect these visible mismatches.

There IS a matchmaking problem. This is evidenced by the overwhelming community response, the valid complaints raised by people who lose wars by 1500+ points despite full participation. and probably most importantly the active SG dev response.

The problem they should be focused on (and I believe they are based on their comments) is how to match up alliances who will preform similarly in wars so as to increase the number fo fun fights and reduce the number of blow-outs. Let’s hope we get there.

Funny, if I wasn’t on these forums, I would think the work they are doing has made HUGE strides towards fairness. My alliance won our first 10-12 wars in huge blowouts saving one war in which we were hugely blown out. Since then, we have had a number of wars where we traded leads back and forth. Our wars these days require full participation, solid resource planning, and coordinated attack strategy to win. These things are actually pretty darn fun when they work! They are working for us. I’m counting my blessings. Hope everyone gets to this point eventually.

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Having attended an Ivy League school, most of our football games seemed as though they were Div I Vs. Div II despite having 2 Div I teams on the field :wink:

Look though, Rev - I think we all agree we would like good matchups and that blow-outs are no fun. TO continue the sports analogy though, remember that blowouts happen and it’s not always because of bad match-ups. How often does a basketball team blow out another, then play the same team within a few days and get blown out by the same players? It happens. In this game it will happen even more due to the random factor of tile distribution having significant effect.

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So to be clear, your matching proposition is just that, to be matched:

  1. Alliances would have the same number of players above level 12, and

  2. Alliances would have approximately equal aggregate Top 5 powers.

Given that the AW matching system already requires approximately equal numbers of players, the only substantial change you are suggesting is a switch from Top 30 to Top 5.

This seems comprehensively wrong. For months, players argued in this forum that requiring war pairings to have equal numbers of players and equal Top 30 scores would result in pretty equal teams. SG listened, changed to exactly the system proposed, and hey presto! Mismatches were eliminated!

Wait - what? They weren’t? Because just because alliances have equal Top 30 scores, doesn’t mean they are evenly matched, right? Similarly, just because alliances have equal Top 5 scores, doesn’t mean they are evenly matched.

Your proposal would continue to ignore the significance of the intra alliance power distribution, and would gleefully ignore bench strength, something the current system at least accounts for. I like that idea - it sounds fun and it would favour deep benches - but it would probably make mismatches even more common than they are now, which is what I thought you were trying to avoid.

I have never in my life watched a college football game, regardless of the divisions, team colours or mascots involved.

OK so at risk of getting too speculative, I believe the motivation for switching to top 5 over top 30 is that people are seeing issues where there are teams on the battlefield that are so much higher than they are used to raiding that they feel they have ‘no chance’. This can happen due to these 5 heroes being wildly stronger than those players benches but averaging out over 30 obscures this. Of course this simple reasoning ignores the fact that stronger benches on the opposing team would be necessary to balance out the apparent mismatches in the top teams.

And more to the point, all of your counterpoints remain valid.

Most importantly, IMO, SG has already taken this to the next level, coming up with a class of solutions (that they are currently testing) that base matches off of top 30 heroes but with additional weight given to top 5. So…what are we talking about here?

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The “approximately” is a problem. The 30 is a problem as well. You mostly have to fight the top 5 as defense teams (not to mention the stupid arrows). If the defenses are near equal, then so should the games. Someone else commented on tile selection and it’s sometimes a problem as well. No way should a 2800 team lose to a 2500 team and not kill a single hero. We are on our 6th or 7th war as underdogs. Most of them we got blown out. Not for lack of skill or effort. Two of those we got lucky the other team didn’t put forth the effort. I enjoyed those wins but it almost doesn’t feel like a real win. I don’t want to blow teams out either. We had that once before. Maybe they have something that works with the new update. Whatever works. Take care.

Ok just a newbie here who has been casually watching these boards for a couple weeks with a suggestion for you to parce.

It seems everyone is focused more on alliance scores and heroes for matchups. I don’t see much discussion about an alliance’s prior performance having any influence on upcoming wars.

While not perfect what about using alliance score with a graduated multiplier based on war wins and losses. You win you face an alliance 5% stronger next war. Win again another 5% and win again it goes up 10% etc until you loose then resets. You loose again and it goes down 5% etc. Percentage can be changed to tweek system. Bcuz it’s graduated I don’t see a big advantage to sandbagging.

New alliance’s may have to fight a minimum of 5 or 10 titans to be eligible for wars. Limits could be placed on not being able to fight too weak of an alliance.

Those who fight stronger alliance’s and win should get better loot and possibly a ranking system like trophies for raids. I don’t think anyone here is happy with the participation trophies we’re getting now!!

Would this not level things a little?

Given the mismatches we’re facing now isn’t it worth a try? It will take some time to balance and not every matchup will be perfect but participation and morale are dropping fast in my alliance and that is NO FUN!!!

Lets hope. As I mentioned above, our wars have recently been fun, close match-ups. They are fun when they work!

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Hi :slight_smile: I’d highly suggest reading through the multiple threads on this subject. A War Score/ladder/ELO based matchmaking system has been discussed many times. The SG devs have even weighed in. I am a champion of this type of solution.

FWIW The devs have countered that the high rate of member turn-over in alliances renders ELO type alliance scoring problematic.

Probably better to leave those discussions to the threads that already cover them.

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I see, thanks for response! I would hate suggest a solution that would be so problematic compared to the current non-problematic system. :wink:

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