“The Road to Better World War Matchmaking” aka Sandbagging!

[Blaster Maximus]

Our Alliance might consider not doing any more World Wars as the match ups are terrible. Is spending >150,000 food worth winning 1/2 the rubies you collect? Let the top teams battle it out. We have lost 10 out of 10 wars as of now. We have L10 perks but that doesn't put us in league with top 100 teams, we have 19,481 glory vs their 25,230 for 100th place.

 

[S_How]

Over a year since this post....and the road is still leading to no where. Current matchup vs GA Soul, one of the highest glory teams in game. Instead of fighting peers, why not just sandbag. It lowers their average level from over 230, to under 200 with just 4/25 sandbags. They have a near 35 level advantage over us, which in the atomic age translates to well over 100 upgrades advantage per base on average. They have around 15 bases in the 230-260 range, compared to our 2 that are 235+. Its a mismatch so horrid it serves no purpose at all to either team. There is no challenge for them whatsoever. It is miserable for us as our 5-10 deep atomic offenses are spread so thin trying to get every star we can....our middle section has the impossible task of hitting max atomic, 777D, filled SH bases with global/early atomic offenses, and our low end gets the sweet task of attacking classicals for 1,000 food in reward.

BHG your system is for sure the worst of any strategy game I have ever played, and your communication/desire to fix it is just as bad.

 

[DUSTY1]

Latest battle versus USA - Their top 3 have 200+ levels - our top player is level 150. We are still plugging through for that day when we all arrive at the top XP perk and our levels rise to something approaching one level. Will we sandbag then because of the game algorithm glitch?

You tell me.

 

[Bobortvogel]

As others have in the past, I proposed a weighting system that would minimize gross mismatches. It would be very easy to program and implement. Nexon could implement anytime they wanted. You would have to ask them why they haven’t tweeted the system.

 

[Master Contrail Program]

Because the biggest spenders like things exactly the way they are. As S How mentioned above it will only get worse as those same big spenders hit level 300 in a matter of weeks after Cold War release.

 

[Bootney Lee Fonsworth]

Let's travel down this pitted, weed-covered road again. With a new update coming and the inevitable 300+ level bases soon to arrive it's as relevant as it ever was.

TinSoldier why has nothing ever been done about this? Why won't the devs just do the most expedient thing and weight the top half of a war lineup twice as much as the bottom half?

Will it solve everything? No. In fact I'm sure it would lead to reverse sandbagging: sprinkling a mix of super attackers and defenders into the lowest ranks. Here's the thing with that though, would that not put the onus on the top alliances to merge and/or bring their strongest people to war everytime? Therefore moving most of the pressure back up toward the top ranks where it belongs? It's not like every group is even capable of fielding 30, 40, 50 CWAs or high atomics as it is.

The system now just encourages the 25th team to bag to avoid the 10th team that bags which causes the 50th team to bag to avoid the 25th team. After nearly 2 years of this, such behavior has trickled down to teams ranked in the 1000s, even the 10000s.

I know levels aren't war weight but since you keep the war weight locked in the vault with the original Coca-Cola formula it's what we have to go by.

When Glory was introduced: Global 150 + Iron 10 ÷ 2 = 80. So the weight of a solid gunpowder, middling enlightenment or weak industrial. Not great, but somewhat manageable, especially because the tactics nerf and silo were just a twinkle in someone's eye at that point.

Now, or soonish: CWA 300 + Iron 10 ÷ 2 = 155. So the weight of a strong industrial, middling global, weak atomic versus the reality of a maxed out CWA.

You could also give two war search options:

Quick Match- the questionable but mostly expedient system we have now.

Or Best Match- Where the system works hard to get you the most even matchup possible, with the caveat that it may take 8, 16, 24 to find one. I'd rather spend hours waiting for a good match than 2 days on a lopsided blowout regardless of which side of it I'm on.

This post was stickied for over a year. It is BY FAR the most commented on post ever in this forum. Lots of lip service was made. Nothing has ever really been done about it. Then this post was unstickied and quietly swept under the rug. Why is that?

Weight the top half twice as much as the bottom half. You could do that in a few days with minimal effort. If not, why not?

 

[RingDiddy]

We need a middle out strategy. Alliance 1 is twice as strong offensivly as alliance 2? Handicap their top half 75% of the strength spread out over the top half based on their contribution to the offensive strength overmatch. Alliance 1 is stronger defensively also? Add 75% of the defensive defiect to the top half of alliance 2 based on their contribution to the defensive defiect. This means alliance 1 is still favored to win but not as horribly. Alliance1 stronger offense but weaker defense. Add 100 % of the offensive deficiency to top half of alliance 2. Subtract 100% of defensive defiect from top half of alliance 2.

 

[Bootney Lee Fonsworth]

TinSoldier could you throw this into the hopper so that it may come up as one of the 5 posts a day you respond to? Not trying to be a jerk, but why sticky this post for over a year and do nothing about it?

 

[Brian70]

No Title

2 years later and it' gotten even worse .... we're facing a team with 7 cold war , 8 atomic, 6 global and 9 iron/classical age armies .... glory for us if we win over 1000 ... glory cor them 2 .... sandbagging has killed WWs and destoys alliances .... good job Nexon you won' get another penny from me or my alliance... screenshots of our last 2 wars ... bull shat

 

[Saruman the White]

Sandbagging is the no1 enemy of war loot. You do this practice, get matched with very easy alliances and 10 Atomic Age players have to battle, let's say, 2 Atomic, 2 Global, 2 Industrial etc. You win what? Very little war loot. Someone has to attack the easiest targets, don't they? Unless they care only about glory...

 

[Desmak]

Sandbagging is the no1 enemy of war loot. You do this practice, get matched with very easy alliances and 10 Atomic Age players have to battle, let's say, 2 Atomic, 2 Global, 2 Industrial etc. You win what? Very little war loot. Someone has to attack the easiest targets, don't they? Unless they care only about glory...

War loots are nothing, even if you won 1mil golds and foods in war. We can easily get that in two or three MP matches, plus its not even enough for you to upgrade a level 9 wall. The problem w sandbagging is it kills all the fun for participating in world war. Its been so long since we get a proper and balance match in war. Please do something!

 

[Mades10]

The difference in combinations has been disastrous.
Please acknowledge that you have no ability to program this.
Let us do this manually.
Just do a ranking that we declare war.
Lastly it would be much better for the system to respond to us "we did not find a match compatible" than to combine with one that we have no chance.
I'm frustrated. We have no motivation to fight the current war.
And we'll be stuck for two days with this frustration.It's very frustrating.
. Big alliances place small towns to fool this ridiculous combination.
. With 2 attacks if half of the members are strong and the other half weak the victory is certain.
It is not possible for them to insist on the error of seeing the war as a whole without comparing member to member.

 

[Saruman the White]

Allow me to state my arguments on that, as war loot is very important to me!

 

[Bootney Lee Fonsworth]

Hey, look what was taken out of mothballs! Let's get some nostalgia on the front page to celebrate this post's nearly two year anniversary without the slightest bit of action from the developers. If you like false hope and weasel words though, this is the only post you'll ever need!

Makes me feel young again.

Kudos on the recent updates that seem universally well-received. It still doesn't change the fact that the Matchotron 5000 has been an abject failure from the jump; one that will only get worse as the player base gets smaller and the maximum levels increase.

I'd like to hear the spin of one of our newer moderators about war matchmaking and why the company has never done anything to improve it. How about it @NxMSuleiman? Speaking of anniversaries, it's been nearly a year since the last AMA, did we give up on those too?

 

[Mat 3 BloodyBarons]

No Title

Thanks to help for improving Sandbagging and Natchmaking, we are facing a team with 9 CWA and 6 Atomic, 5 others are at classical or medieval age. Not fun and losing our time.

 

[Safyr]

At the very least, Nexon should make inactive accounts actually inactive and unusable. So many sand bag alliances use players who have been in active for six months to three years. War Allies, my alliance, just lost to an alliance with 3 Iron Age members who were inactive for 400+ to 700+ days. Why are these three members allowed to even still have an account in any alliance?

 

[yemen]

Wouldn't make any difference. Easy to make an iron and long in once a week to get the same effect. The real problem is that the low level accounts have any place in matchmaking at all.

 

[hawkeye2701]

How about 20% war participant is not counted for war power level ? Let's say for 30 vs 30, the 6 most below is not counted. Whether 6 iron age or 6 classical or 6 gunpowder, it's 0 power level for matchmaking purpose.

Rgds,

 

[No Angel]

Counterattacking Sandbags

>>Surrender or Next Match button, just like MP
​​​​​​>>Minimum age to participate is Medieval (at least those iron bags would have to work a bit to gain their weight )
>>Inactive accounts are automatically disabled for war until they log in again
>>Penalty for unused attacks, -5 per attack (at least they will have to activate their bags during each war and attack, but I bet some of them must have forgotten their passwords )
>>Create your own bags

Some say, only count a half of teampower, but it's a bit too idealistic since we all know that matchmaking is never that serious. That algorithm they're practicing is in the unknown area.
We can just change everything but the infamous algorithm.

 

[BHG_Muet]

Hey! Here’s a thread I can provide more detail in. I’ll be writing a full Design Spotlight on all of the MM changes soon but I can give a sneak peak now:

1. It’s a complete rework of MM, the algorithm, how the queue functions, how glory is applied, everything.
2. Glory will function pretty similarly to Elo with a few targeted improvements to how the K-Factor works and how we handle Alliances at the very top.
3. The algorithm will analyze the bases of all participating Alliance members in a similar fashion to before with a key difference. Instead of an absolute comparison, it now compares the percentage delta in power; a simple change that showed a great improvement in the system’s ability to predict WR.
4. The algorithm will also be able to detect imbalances in the Alliance’s composition (aka sandbagging). The effect of this will be a system that favors pairing Alliances with like compositions. So, if you’re an Alliance that sandbags, you’ll be more likely to be paired with another Alliance using the same strategy.
5. There’s a lot more going into it than that. But, those are some high-level changes. Lastly, we’ll be reducing the number of War Sizes a little (removing some of the less active sizes). The goal here is to have more Alliances in fewer queues to improve the potential pool of matches. When I post the Design Spotlight, it will cover the full list of War Sizes (don’t worry, 50v50 is staying around for the community to use as events).