Suggestions for tweaking the raid system

One idea I’ve been kicking around is a slight tweak to matching, combined with an improved raid tutorial at the outset. Most of the frustration I see comes from one of two sources. The first one is a lack of understanding of how raiding actually works, the matchmaking and the mechanics. The second is consistently being matched with players who appear significantly more powerful than you.

An improved raid tutorial would address the first issue, at least somewhat. It would need to explain clearly and succinctly how opponents are chosen and how the cup awards are determined. It would need to cover how each team gains mana and how both normal and special attacks work. It should mention that buffs and debuffs override others of the same type, and that the AI goes from left to right. It should also stress that team power levels are only a rough approximation, not a hard and fast determination of who should win.

A tweak to the matchmaking would address the frustration of being overmatched, especially at lower levels. Currently, you’ll be matched with someone who has within 300 cups of your total. This mechanism is easily manipulated by dropping cups to give much easier matches, thus allowing the stronger players to prey on the weaker ones and fill their chest without fear of being revenged. A couple of small tweaks to matching could change that without requiring a large change in the coding. First, make raid arenas a reflection of the highest cups a player has won, rather than their current cups. If you’ve won enough cups to hit Platinum, you’re a Platinum player regardless of your current cup total. Your raid chest tier would still be determined by your current cup total. Once your raid arena is determined, your pool of available matches will be drawn from players who are no more than one tier lower AND within 10% of your current cup total. So for example, if you’re currently in high Gold at 1750 cups, but raiding up into Platinum to open your chest, you’re a Platinum player. Your raid opponents would be players from Gold, Platinum or Diamond arenas with a current cup total of 1750 +/- 175, or 1575-1925. If you decide to drop cups down to 1000, your opponents would then be chosen from Gold arena or higher players with a current cup total of 900-1100. You’d be facing other cup droppers with easy defenses, so you’d still be able to fill your chest, but they’d have a fair chance at revenge. You wouldn’t be matched up with Silver arena players at all.

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I think there could be some sort of warning or info regarding cup droppers. I skip them as it’s pretty obvious most of the time.

The system is not perfect but I enjoy it. I have to raid teams stronger than myself unless I risk a revenge and losing twice as many cups. I lose A lot. But I enjoy the challenge and the game.

Could you define what is a cup dropper for you? How much should be the gap between max. TP and defense TP to count as a dropper?
I think you should leave this out. Sometimes a certain combination of the heroes is better even when the TP is much less as it could be…so not possible to confine who is cup dropper and who not.

I see your Point @MaralynManson but still you need certain rules what is too many Cups for which TP.

I think an improved raid tutorial is a really excellent idea, but I don’t believe matchmaking needs to be changed at all. Here’s half a vote.

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Once again: you need certain rules. So if this is a cup dropper for you would be 1495 cups related to a TP 2224 not be a cup dropper, then???

To summarize your suggestions:

  1. Create a throrough tutorial on raid mechanics. (Note: a link to a SGG-produces video might be the easiest way to do this)
  2. Narrow the raid range from +/- 300 cups to +/- 10%
  3. Make arena rankings “sticky” based on max cups and limit matches to people in adjacent arenas

I like 1 & 2. Three seems okayish, but if we’re going to go in this direction, there have been ideas I liked more, particularly Trophies & Permanence - a rewarding PvP system with more depth and climb incentives idea (even without extra loot)

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I really liked that idea too, but after so long, it’s obviously not going to be implemented

Right now matchmaking in raids are based on numbers of trophies. As proven, this number can be easily manipulated since nothing has to do with team power and/or bench depth.
Color stacking one player can easily get 2500 cups, and setting a poor defense team can drop to 1000 in matter of hours.
To avoid this, some limits could be added to the tiers (or arenas), like we have in events.

Gold: up to 3* heroes and 2* troops
Platinum: up to 4* heroes and 3* troops
Diamond: up to 5* heroes and 4* troops

Here you can CHOOSE your arena, regardless your trophies count.
I set my defense team in Gold arena so I raid there. And I avoid a cup dropper with poor defense and “bunch of HOTM” attack team.
You got blessed with some good 5*? Put your defense in Diamond and test your skill raiding similar TP adversaries.
Certainly this way trophies can overlap between tiers (upper Platinum could have more than lower Diamond, and so) but I don’t see a major issue here since I think each arena will eventually find its natural limit.

I like your idea in general. However, I’m a little concerned about this part:

This has a very real risk of stranding players who drop down in cups if they fall below the +/- 300 cups band for their arena (or +/- 10% band, or an equivalent banding system).

There’s enough players worldwide that it shouldn’t be an issue.

You have raided into Gold arena? You get matched with Silver, Gold or Platinum players within 10% of your current trophies. Nobody below Silver, nobody in Diamond

You’ve made it into Platinum? You get matched with Gold, Platinum or Diamond players within 10%. Nobody Silver or lower

You’re new and haven’t been beyond Silver? You won’t be matched higher than Gold.

You’re in Diamond? Guess what? All your opponents will be Platinum or Diamond.

There’s enough players who either drop cups or have runs of bad luck that being unable to find an opponent would be an extremely rare situation

Every time you beat someone to climb your way out, you push that player further down. It’s going to make people even more reliant on revenges to climb back up than they already are.

ETA: not that I’m convinced cup dropping actually needs to be fixed, but inasmuch as one sees it as a problem to correct, this really limits who gets clipped rather than eliminates the practice.

Here’s an example. John had been playing for a while and generally sits around 1600 trophies, squarely in Gold Arena. So far, he hasn’t pushed into Platinum yet. His raid opponents would come from Silver, Gold or Platinum. If he’s currently at 1500 trophies, his opponents will have current trophies between 1350-1650.

Possible opponents:
Pete, Gold Arena player, currently at 1450 cups
Jim, Platinum arena player after a run of bad luck, currently at 1625 trophies
Tom, Platinum arena player who is dropping cups for an easy chest, currently at 1355 cups.

Not eligible:
Jason, Diamond arena player who forgot to replace his Titan team and has dropped to 1600 cups
Bill, Silver arena, currently at 1199 cups

Still does not address the issue of a flawed algorithm that favors the defenders to the extent that it is absolutely ludicrous to even try to hit a player higher than you. Not even that, if you are a slight favorite forget it. You lose. Like I said b4. I don’t hit any more. Let them attack me. No chance I’ll drop in cup count that way.

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Except the algorithm doesn’t favor the defender. The attacker literally has all the advantages. If you’re not winning at least 70% of your raids on attack, one of two things is going on. Either you’ve reached the top of the cup range your heroes can handle and you’re punching above your weight, or you aren’t using the advantages you have. Are you choosing opponents whose specials you can counter, and rerolling those you can’t, or are you just looking at team power? Are you stacking colors against their biggest threat? Are you selecting heroes to counter their specials? Are you selecting heroes that complement each other, or ones that override or work against each other? Are you choosing your tile moves to set up combos, dragons, and diamonds, or are you playing spray and pray? Are you focusing your attacks on one hero at a time? Are you ghosting tiles through empty spaces to charge your hitters without charging theirs? Are you timing and targeting your specials to maximize their effectiveness, or just firing randomly? Those are all advantages that the attacker has. The defender has none of those. Defense teams are static. They don’t change based on the attacker. They gain mana only from being hit by tiles (and a slow trickle each turn). They don’t benefit from stacking colors. The AI is stupid when it comes to using special abilities. It will fire them as soon as they’re charged, and not always at the best target. The defender is at such a disadvantage that the developers had to apply a 20% attack bonus on defense to give them even a small chance.

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