War Matchmaking Issue -- Proposed Solutions (Developer response: post 107)

Exactly.

What currently doesn’t make sense is that my alliance keeps getting paired against stronger alliances, simply based on the fact that we’ve managed to beat stronger alliances before.

I mean sure, that’s all well and good, if we’re actually that much better than all the alliances of equal strength.

The issue is that… the reason we’re winning is because we’re better coordinated than many of the bigger teams. That’s not our fault? Shouldn’t they be the ones who are expected to “get better”, not vice versa? If they don’t want to lose, maybe they should um… ohhhh I don’t know… use all of their freaking flags? At the very least.

But then we have the occasional opponent who actually is well coordinated and uses all of their flags, and they’re all much higher level than us, leaving us with basically zero chance of winning. That’s not fair for us.

And yeah, usually these are “new” alliances. Not new as in new players. Most of their players are level 50+ minimum. Somehow they get matched against teams with lower level members and weaker TP because… why? Because they’re “new”? Let’s give them some easy fights early on until they learn what they’re doing? Sure, I guess that’s a nice courtesy to extend to an actual “new” alliance, but in reality, an actual new alliance absolutely should expect to lose wars until they learn how to war better. Versus these guys who are already very experienced in wars, coming in pretending to be newbies just so that they can beat up on lower level teams… it’s sick, really, is what it is.

Especially when war history is based on the last 20 wars… so it can literally take months for war scores to actually adjust to a proper level for any alliance. That’s extremely excessive in my opinion.

By tying war histories to each individual player - it might not be a perfect solution, but at least it will prevent experienced war veterans from creating new alliances to reset their history back to noob level. It will force strong players to actually have to fight other equally strong players, and vice versa. As it should be.

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Just so I’m clear, the matchmaker will no longer do alliance war score? Instead player war score? Will the alliance leader be able to see the war scores? I would like to know a person score upon deciding to keep them or not. Also, if a player sit out a war will his score drop? The reason I ask is players in my alliance are adults and have things to do and opted out a lot.

It hasn’t been officially released yet as far as I know, but if I’m understanding it correctly… each player will still carry a personal war score, and alliance war score will be a total of all opted in players’ scores. Just that, the win/loss history will be tied to each individual player vs. the entire alliance.

Curious as to why you would “decide whether or not to keep someone” based on their personal score… considering that you don’t know how much of that score is based on their win/loss history vs. their bench depth…

Are you wanting to kick people if their scores are too high? Because if they have high scores, it either means they have really good bench depth, or came from an alliance that won a lot of wars, or both… which would be a good thing? Of course, it could also possibly match you up against stronger opponents…

Or are you wanting to kick them for having scores that are too low? That… I guess would be reasonable… ish… but kinda sucks for that person. Might not be their fault. Maybe they just need some proper help and guidance…?

As for opting out. I believe that your win/loss ratio remains completely unchanged if you opt out. At that point, your war score will only go up as you level up your troops and heroes. I think… pretty sure, at least, because my entire alliance opted out of wars for months, and I’m fairly certain our win/loss ratio didn’t move at all in that time.

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I think people shouldn’t be “forced” to lose after some specific point, but if that’s the general consensus, i can’t (and will not) go against it.

I quite know my personal opinion is nothing compared to the overall perceived satisfaction.

Really hoped this never happen, but expected it.

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This is the second time I have seen this and yes one of the Devs told me they are aware of this and they are working on a solution. The Alliance was full of very strong members. But got matched with us. After war they all left the alliance. Yes I’m sure you see that all the time.

I’ve only seen a number of people leave an alliance before a war ends (which messed up my data gathering). I also believe we went up against a group of war shufflers once before (we lost, but not by much). Personally I can’t claim I see it all the time, but I do follow all the war threads and occasionally participate in them so am aware of the issues some people face.

One of the devs responded above:

And with the current version having rolled out, the process has begun. Again, as I mentioned, time will tell if it will have the effect some of us hope it will have. While this thread got the response, a different thread proposed war history as a player metric rather than alliance metric as a solution to the issue a few months before:

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This simply isn’t true. I’m in an alliance and have been for a good long while and did a LOT of recruiting, sadly most new players don’t take the war seriously and get upset and leave when asked to improve their war participation or have to be removed from the alliance.

We manage to maintain 23 to 26 players most of the time and our leader has said they would rather be a little smaller than to have unreliable members. It’s a lot of work to try and keep an alliance full with few new members not always making the cut.

I like most of the ideas proposed, but as mentioned above it isn’t always easy to keep a full alliance and this punishes alliances that aren’t full for no fault of their own in many cases. I like the idea of rewarding alliances with better loot, but it shouldn’t be based a number of members. I would much rather prefer it be based an average number of days members have been a part of the alliance. That way there is an incentive to join a well established alliance helping the entire alliance community.

As far as players opting in and out of war to skew their war record, the easy fix is to only account for war history when there is war participation. If they opt out of a war, then simply don’t take that into the individual war history so that opting out doesn’t change anything.

Good point, the game does keep track of the players war participation though and as long as they don’t join the war in another alliance their war chest participation stays intact. Perhaps they can keep a record of war participation in the given alliance instead of the total days in alliance? Just a thought!

I have posted in other similar threads discussing this topic that the war score should be tracked individually and I think that solves 90% of the issues with war matchups, but I like most of the ideas proposed. I just disagree with any benefit or penalty associated with the size of the alliance, there are simply to many different reasons, just as there are different type of people for differing sizes of alliances with many being outside of the alliances control.

These are good adjustments. Loyalty rewards, in particular, will keep people in alliances without punishing teams that are just starting out.

I speak as the leader of an Alliance of . . . hang on a moment . . .

. . . 9

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nobody is “forcing” anybody to loose, unless of course you think you are being “forced” to loose by matching you against opponents as strong as you.

The whole thing is to avoid people having long streak of wins, in a way or another.
The whole point of increasing strenght of opponent after a win is for that very reason.

Not saying it is something wrong.
Every people should fight knowing they have at least a chance to win and probably no one should always win.

But yes, this is part a game of chance, and facing 10 fights against similar strenght it is very likely you lose at least one due bad boards.

Or are you saying you’re able to beat every single opponent with your same strenght?

Because if you say so… good for you.

As much as i think to be a good raider, i really doubt i can win every single battle in that situation, while i do win every battle right now.

So in a sense yes, they forcing me to lose.

There is absolutely no problem if you always win facing enemies as strong as you, in fact it’s quite an accomplishment that anyone will hardly criticize, but congratulate you for that.

But, if, on the other hand, you always win because you always face teams way weaker than yours, that’s just plain bullying.

My alliance does not win every war, but we have a healthy pace opening chests.

So no, no one will force you to lose, just to fight more fair fights, the losing part is up to you and the boards.

I agree, and this is what shufflers are taking from the teams they face, so SGG is actually being forced to try and give them a better shot.

This sounds like two very different concepts covered by one phrase. In an environment where playing constantly is a requirement, an Elo ladder system or anything similar will propel you to face progressively stronger and stronger teams until you either achieve the top rating or face an opponent you cannot beat. This is the sense in which we would be “forced to lose” under a ladder ranked system, and I believe this is what @Elpis means.

Would like to know. Yes? No?

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The dev response above already announced this is the route they’ll be taking to see if it fixes the war shuffling issue (main point of contention for many players).

From many posts across many threads the algorithm is essentially geared towards a 50/50 win/lose record, as I understand it. As it stands it’s like a combination of team strength and form (like in team sports).

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No.

@Elpis shuffles alliances, thus he wins every war.

So, in his mind, changing the current system is forcing him to lose.

I don’t see the ladder system as a mean to force an alliance to lose, but to climb positions on the leaderboard.

Example: An alliance at the top will never face a stronger opponent, and yet they will sometimes loose.

The point of matching you with stronger opponents is because the system considers alliance growth in strength and coordination, so when you reach your cap (lose a war) it gets you back to face slightly weaker teams.

then it’s not untrue

case and point. thanks

how the current system is supposed to work.

no alliances has spots unless they want to have spots

that’s 100% truth

there are way more players than alliances in the game

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Forcing me to sometimes lose, because yes, recently i had some very close fights but never lost.

Not going to be a drama queen for that, even more now that i do not care so much anymore to keep the pace.

But i still think it’s a shame all the people must playing in the same way to not fall behind.

For me the best solution would still be giving better rewards for the regulars rather then force people to quit playing differently.

Same as i think a buff on weaker heroes is better of a nerf on a strong one.

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Wait? What? I agree with @Elpis? Buffing loot for those that stay full and don’t change alliances just to “win” - hmm what’s wrong with this picture :thinking:

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You’re joking right? How can you fall more behind than taking 12 weeks to open a war chest? Because at the pace shuffling is growing now, if SGG did nothing, that’s the more likely scenario new players will face, if anything, you are the ones forcing other players to fall behind.

And honestly, blaming SGG for that is just rationalization , E&P has been steadily releasing new ways to get loot.

Just assume you learned about the loophole and you are taking advantage of it, even if that meant ruining the game experience for weaker players, it would be more honest.

But since SGG is now going to do something about it, I’ll just say enjoy while it lasts.

This one I agree with you 100%, but I think they are having a hard time finding the correct balance for you-know-who.

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