Wars. Can we have new members wait a day or two before opting in to prevent matchmaking manipulation?

So… we have just done yet another war with another alliance who had members hop in right before war. This seems to throw off the match-making algorithm (I hope this is the right word or close enough) that the game utilizes.

Could we set it so that new members can’t join in war for a day or two? Or not til second war?

(This would also help on the flip side of the drama of new members who leave mid-war).

Not sure how it can “throw off the algorithm” as you put it… it’s pretty much assured…

Matchmaking factors in:

  • Number of players opted into war
  • Strength of top 5 heroes in each players roster (opted in to war)
  • Top 30 heroes in each players roster (opted in to war)
  • Alliances past performance in wars (Last 20 AW).

So new players to the alliance still affect points 1-3… the only thing they don’t impact is the past performance which is updated after each war…

This was written by someone in Russian and translated by someone in our alliance who speaks multiple languages.

“I’m in my home alliance. With my home alliance allies, I form a bunch of secondary accounts, put them in a new alliance (henceforth known as scrub alliance) and we all level them just past the point where they can be in a war. We leave them there and play our normal teams in the home alliance.

The warning for when match-making begins appears. We monitor it. A few minutes before matchmaking happens, we take our regular teams from the home alliance and dump them into the scrub alliance. Assuming the algorithm couldn’t adjust to that kind of increase in power that quickly, you’d wind up with a huge mismatch assuming the scrubs were matched with a squad similar to them before the new teams joined.

Destroy opposition in war, collect war winnings, build war chest, leave scrub alliance for home alliance en masse (lowering the score again the process), and go fight titans for Titan chest and rewards.

Come back in three days and repeat.

Doing this, assuming it worked, would allow for higher Titans to be fought while getting to the war chest more quickly (the war chest probably being the best chest in the game beyond the rare: wanted ones). Yes, maybe one Titan gets away every few days doing this, but that’s a small price to pay for getting the war chest opened.

From everything I’ve seen, it just matters that you can open the war chest; the quality of the opposition doesn’t matter, so whether you get there beating a bunch of scrubs or a bunch of high level teams is immaterial (unlike base Titan rewards).

This is only viable because the war chest won’t reset in the scrub alliance if you leave for the home alliance for a few days as long as you don’t fight a war in the home alliance. That’s why this would be done. Close that loop, and the problem ends.

I saw a Titan dubious tactic also. You all have duplicate accounts. Leave a couple of spots open in your alliance and rotate in those duplicate accounts to hit the Titan giving lots of extra Titan hits.”

I guess I thought it could be manipulated. ^

Can it not ?

Not quite… You are manipulating the matchmaking that way but NOT because of the algorithm getting confused or whatnot…

This is the key here in the process… “NEW” alliance.

With a “NEW” alliance you are manipulating the “Past War history” part of a war score…

If an alliance is brand new, they have no war score…

If we write it mathematically:
[War Score] = [Top 5 Hero Power] + [Top 30 Hero Power] + [Past Performance]
So a new alliance, has the [Past Performance] = 0

So matchmaking for a new alliance is still matching with a similar [War Score] alliance but there [Top 5 Hero Power] & [Top 30 Hero Power] is much larger than their opponent… because the [Past Performance] is zero (0)…

Mathematically, if 1 = new alliance & 2 = older alliance
[War Score 1] ~= [War Score 2]
[Top 5 Hero Power] + [Top 30 Hero Power] + 0 = [Top 5 Hero Power] + [Top 30 Hero Power] + [Past Performance]

Overall

Overall, this process is known as War Hopping or the War Shuffle.

There are a couple threads on this topic, the best ones explaining it are below:

Okay. Cool.

So do you agree or disagree with the idea of maybe implementing a delay before new members can go into war? Like I would be cool with a delay.

I believe there is another thread to the same/similar effect:

I agree that the war shuffling or whatever sucks but I dont agree with the delay because some alliances like mine like to go merc and help out friends with titans when not war locked and that would make that much harder to do. Or people that go visit friends for a war are then prolonged and it’s harder for them to do

Two hours opt in delay would do the whole thing and wouldn’t harm mercing.

I can the point on that one newer members restricted once matchmaking started.

Then an opt-in function for leaders to control once matchmaking occurs. This would still allow merc entry

I dont agree with that either. Too easy to be misused. And then what happens in alliances that are super casual and the leader isnt extremely active? Or something happens and the leader forgets to opt people in?